ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

Second  Series 


ATLANTIC 
CLASSICS 


The  Atlantic  Monthly  Press,  Inc 

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COPYRIGHT,   1910,  BY  HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,   1914,  BY  JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN 

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COPYRIGHT,  1918,  BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS,  INC. 


TO 

ATLANTIC   READERS   EVERYWHERE 
FROM   ALASKA    TO   ZANZIBAR 
AND  FROM  NINE  TO  NINETY 


377522 


Preface 

WHEN,  some  two  years  ago  a  collection  of  Atlan 
tic  essays  was  offered  to  the  public,  it  was  the 
editor's  idea  that  this  volume  should  be,  to  use 
the  current  phrase,  a  kind  of  permanent  exhibit 
of  the  character  and  quality  of  The  Atlantic.  In 
these  hurrying  days,  even  the  sedatest  of  maga 
zines  must  quicken  its  pace  to  keep  abreast  of  the 
marching  world,  and  much  that  is  most  service 
able  in  The  Atlantic  during  its  appointed  life  dies 
at  the  heart  when  a  new  number  brings  fresh 
interests  to  men's  minds.  But  a  residue  there  is, 
no  more  useful  at  the  time,  perhaps,  than  much 
which  perishes,  but  which  evidently  ought  to  have 
such  length  of  days  as  the  covers  of  a  book  can 
ensure  for  it.  The  experiment  was  made  with 
the  first  volume  of  Atlantic  Classics,  composed  of 
sixteen  essays,  by  as  many  authors,  all  dealing 
with  topics  of  more  than  temporary  interest. 
The  success  of  this  book,  which  has  been  many 
times  reprinted,  outstripped  anticipation;  more 
than  that,  it  assumed  a  character  quite  unlocked 
for,  and  proceeded,  on  its  own  account,  to  intro 
duce  itself  into  the  curricula  of  colleges  and  high 
schools  throughout  the  country,  welcomed,  as  the 
editor  is  credibly  informed,  by  students  as  well  as 
by  teachers. 

vii 


PREFACE 

Even  a  layman  can  see  that  in  such  a  use 
there  is  a  sound  development.  A  book  of  con 
temporary  expression,  exhilarating  to  the  stu 
dent  and  knitting  his  interests  to  those  of  the 
world  outside  the  schoolroom,  may  be  peculiarly 
suited  to  call  forth  his  appreciation  and  to  kindle 
emulation  within  him.  Such  a  book  may  teach 
him  to  think  of  literature  as  a  living  thing,  quite 
as  alive  and  full  of  spirit  as  he  is  himself,  and  by 
such  method,  perhaps,  tender  shoots  of  young  in 
telligence  may  be  spared  the  blighting  influence 
of  too  formal  education. 

These  matters  belong  most  properly  to  the 
province  of  the  schoolmaster.  The  editor's  is  a 
different  purpose.  It  is  not  a  text  which  he  seeks 
to  compile,  but  (forgive  a  layman's  distinction)  a 
book,  a  book  to  read,  enjoy,  and  keep.  To  all 
who  have  found  amusement  and  profit  in  the  first 
series  of  Atlantic  Classics,  I  think  I  can  promise 
that  here  shall  be  found  no  lowering  of  the  bars, 
but  only  the  enlargement  of  interest  which  must 
come  from  such  an  influx  of  new  company. 

During  pleasant  hours  spent  in  selecting  this 
second  series  of  essays  typical  of  The  Atlantic,  I 
have  more  than  once  turned  aside  to  re-read  well- 
remembered  pages  of  a  similar  character  written 
an  hundred  years  and  more  ago  by  men  whose 
names,  if  not  effulgent,  still  shine  in  clusters  from 
the  more  condensed  paragraphs  of  our  literary 
histories.  Comparisons  are  odious,  and  stir  in 
ordinate  prejudice;  so  names  shall  not  be  men- 

viii 


PREFACE 

tioned  here,  but  as  I  turn  from  those  enshrined 
volumes  to  the  less  sententious  essays  of  our  day, 
I  can  truly  say  I  feel  no  drop  to  earth  from  heaven. 
Here  before  me  is  a  group  of  essays,  quite  as 
individual,  if  less  self-conscious;  quite  as  urbane, 
often  in  better  taste ;  and  quite  (one  reader  thinks) 
as  suggestive  of  company  he  should  like  to  keep. 
Take  for  instance  such  a  paper  as  Miss  Macken 
zie's  *  Exile  and  Postman.'  Bind  it  in  levant, 
gild  well  ornament  and  title,  and  let  it  stand 
straight  on  your  bookshelf  for  an  hundred  years. 
Then  shall  your  great-grandson  take  it  down  and 
learn  with  respect  that  in  his  grandsire's  day 
English  still  lived  as  English,  and  that  the  magic 
of  words  cannot  die. 

In  republishing  this  collection,  The  Atlantic 
Press  owes  its  warm  thanks  to  every  author  rep 
resented,  and  desires  to  make  acknowledgment 
to  Houghton  Mifflin  Company  for  the  inclusion 
of  Mr.  Merwin's  inimitable  'Dogs  and  Men,' 
already  reprinted  in  a  volume  of  the  author's 
own;  to  the  Macmillan  Company  for  permission 
granted  to  Miss  Addams  to  allow  her  contem 
porary  legend  '  The  Devil  Baby'  to  be  reprinted 
here.  It  should  be  added  that  Mr.  Chapman's 
shining  paper  on  'The  Greek  Genius'  will  be 
found  in  more  extended  form  in  his  volume  of 
similar  title,  to  which  every  instructed  reader 
should  turn. 

E.  S. 

The  Atlantic  Office. 
January,  1918. 


Contents 


DOGS  AND  MEN Henry  C.  Merwin  i 

**•  JUNGLE  NIGHT William    Beebe  26  - 

THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE Jane  Addams  52 

EVERY  MAN'S   NATURAL   DESIRE   TO   BE  SOMEBODY 

ELSE Samuel  McChord  Crothers  78 

THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICULT  DOOR Robert  M.  Gay  95 

*•  EXILE  AND  POSTMAN Jean  Kenyan  Mackenzie  109 

•'-THE  LIFE  OF  ADVENTURE Edgar  J.  Goodspeed  121 

«-  AN  INDICTMENT  OF  INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

William  T.  Foster  134 

CAR- WINDOW  BOTANY Lida   F.  Baldwin  162 

STUDIES  IN  SOLITUDE Fannie  Stearns  Gifford  173 

THE  GREEK  GENIUS John  Jay  Chapman  184 

IN  PRAISE  OF  OLD  LADIES Lucy  Martin  Donnelly  217 

A  MEMORY  OF  OLD  GENTLEMEN Sharlot  M.  Hall  227 

V. VIOLA'S  LOVERS Richard  Bowland  Kimball  235  '  ** 

HAUNTED  LIVES Laura  Spencer  Portor  247 

THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA.  .Anne  C.  E.  Allinson  273 

~~  THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY Elizabeth  Taylor  292    '* 

BIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 307 


Dogs  and  Men 

By  Henry  C.  Merwin 

THERE  are  men  and  women  in  the  world  who, 
of  their  own  free  will,  live  a  dogless  life,  not  know 
ing  what  they  miss;  and  for  them  this  essay, 
securely  placed  in  the  dignified  Atlantic,  there 
to  remain  so  long  as  libraries  and  books  shall  en 
dure,  is  chiefly  written.  Let  them  not  pass  it 
by  in  scorn,  but  rather  stop  to  consider  what  can 
be  said  of  the  animal  as  a  fellow  being  entitled  to 
their  sympathy,  and  having,  perhaps,  a  like  des 
tiny  with  themselves. 

As  to  those  few  persons  who  are  not  only  dog- 
less  but  dog-haters,  they  should  excite  pity  rather 
than  resentment.  The  man  who  hates  a  good  dog 
is  abnormal,  and  cannot  help  it.  I  once  knew  such 
a  man,  a  money-lender  long  since  passed  away, 
whose  life  was  largely  a  crusade  against  dogs,  car 
ried  on  through  newspapers,  pamphlets,  and  in 
conversation. 

He  used  to  declare  that  he  had  often  been  bit 
ten  by  these  animals,  and  that,  on  one  occasion, 
a  terrier  actually  jumped  on  the  street-car  in 
which  he  was  riding,  took  a  small  piece  out  of  his 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

leg  (a  mere  soupgon,  no  doubt),  and  then  jumped 
off  —  all  without  apparent  provocation,  and  in  a 
moment  of  time.  Probably  this  story,  strange  as 
it  may  sound,  was  substantially  true.  The  per 
ceptions  of  the  dog  are  wonderfully  acute.  A  re 
cent  occurrence  may  serve  as  the  converse  of  the 
money-lender's  story.  A  lost  collie,  lame  and 
nearly  starved,  was  taken  in,  fed,  and  cared  for 
by  a  household  of  charitable  persons,  who,  how 
ever,  did  not  like  or  understand  dogs,  and  were 
anxious  to  get  rid  of  this  one,  provided  that  a  good 
home  could  be  found  for  him.  In  the  course  of  a 
week  there  came  to  call  upon  them  in  her  buggy 
an  old  lady  who  is  extremely  fond  of  dogs,  and 
who  possesses  that  combination  of  a  masterful 
spirit  with  deep  affection  which  acts  like  witch 
craft  upon  the  lower  animals.  The  collie  was 
brought  out,  and  the  story  of  his  arrival  was  re 
lated  at  length.  Meanwhile  the  old  lady  and  the 
dog  looked  each  other  steadfastly  in  the  eye.  '  Do 
you  want  to  come  with  me,  doggie?'  she  said  at 
last,  not  really  meaning  to  take  him.  Up  jumped 
the  dog,  and  sat  down  beside  her,  and  could  not 
be  dislodged  by  any  entreaties  or  commands  — 
and  all  parties  were  loath  to  use  force.  She  took 
him  home,  but  brought  him  back  the  next  day,  in 
tending  to  leave  him  behind  her.  Again,  how 
ever,  the  dog  refused  to  be  parted  from  his  new 
and  real  friend.  He  bestowed  a  perfunctory  wag 
of  the  tail  upon  his  benefactors  —  he  was  not  un 
grateful  ;  but,  like  all  dogs,  he  sought  not  chiefly 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

meat  and  bones  and  a  comfortable  place  by  the 
fire,  but  affection  and  caresses.  The  dog  does  not 
live  that  would  refuse  to  forsake  his  dinner  for 
the  companionship  of  his  master. 

The  mission  of  the  dog  —  I  say  it  with  all  rev 
erence  —  is  the  same  as  the  mission  of  Christian 
ity,  namely,  to  teach  mankind  that  the  universe 
is  ruled  by  love.  Ownership  of  a  dog  tends  to 
soften  the  hard  hearts  of  men.  There  are  two 
great  mysteries  about  the  lower  animals:  one, 
the  suffering  which  they  have  to  endure  at  the 
hands  of  man ;  the  other,  the  wealth  of  affection 
which  they  possess,  and  which  for  the  most  part 
is  unexpended.  All  animals  have  this  capacity 
for  loving  other  creatures,  man  included.  Crows, 
for  example,  show  it  to  a  remarkable  degree.  '  As 
much  latent  affection  goes  to  waste  in  every  flock 
of  crows  that  flies  overhead  as  would  fit  a  human 
household  for  heaven. '*  A  crow  and  a  dog,  if 
kept  together,  will  become  almost  as  fond  of  each 
other  as  of  their  master. 

Surely  this  fact,  this  capacity  of  the  lower 
animals  to  love,  not  only  man,  but  one  another, 
is  the  most  significant,  the  most  deserving  to  be 
pondered,  the  most  important  in  respect  to  their 
place  in  the  universe,  of  all  the  facts  that  can  be 
learned  about  them.  Compared  with  it,  how 
trivial  is  anything  that  the  zoologist  or  biologist 
or  the  physiologist  can  tell  us  about  the  nature  of 
the  lower  animals! 

1  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  89,  p.  322. 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

The  most  beautiful  sight  in  the  world,  I  once 
heard  it  said  (by  myself,  to  be  honest),  is  the  ex 
pression  in  the  eyes  of  an  intelligent,  sweet-tem 
pered  pup  —  a  pup  old  enough  to  take  an  inter 
est  in  things  about  him,  and  yet  so  young  as  to 
imagine  that  everybody  will  be  good  to  him;  so 
young  as  not  to  fear  that  any  man  or  boy  will 
kick  him,  or  that  any  dog  will  take  away  his  bone. 
In  the  eyes  of  such  a  pup  there  is  a  look  of  con 
fiding  innocence,  a  consciousness  of  his  own  weak 
ness  and  inexperience,  a  desire  to  love  and  to  be 
loved,  which  are  irresistible.  In  older  dogs  one  is 
more  apt  to  notice  an  eager,  anxious,  inquiring 
look,  as  if  they  were  striving  to  understand  things 
which  the  Almighty  had  placed  beyond  their 
mental  grasp ;  and  the  nearest  approach  to  a  real 
ly  human  expression  is  seen  in  dogs  suffering  from 
illness.  Heine,  who,  as  the  reader  well  knows, 
served  a  long  apprenticeship  to  pain,  somewhere 
says  that  pain  refines  even  the  lower  animals;  and 
all  who  are  familiar  with  dogs  in  health  and  in 
disease  will  see  the  truth  of  this  statement.  I 
have  seen  in  the  face  of  an  intelligent  dog,  suffer 
ing  acutely  from  distemper,  a  look  so  human  as 
to  be  almost  terrifying;  as  if  I  had  accidentally 
caught  a  glimpse  of  some  deep-lying  trait  in  the 
animal  which  nature  had  intended  to  conceal 
from  mortal  gaze. 

The  dog,  in  fact,  makes  a  continual  appeal  to 
the  sympathies  of  his  human  friends,  and  thus 
tends  to  prevent  them  from  becoming  hard  or 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

narrow.  There  are  certain  families,  especially 
perhaps  in  New  England,  and  most  of  all,  no 
doubt,  in  Boston,  who  need  to  be  regenerated, 
and  might  be  regenerated  by  keeping  a  dog,  pro 
vided  that  they  went  about  it  in  the  proper  spirit. 
A  distinguished  preacher  and  author,  himself  a 
Unitarian,  remarked  recently  in  an  address  to 
Unitarians  that  they  were  usually  the  most  self- 
satisfied  people  that  he  ever  met.  It  was  a  casual 
remark,  and  perhaps  neither  he  nor  those  who 
heard  it  appreciated  its  full  significance.  How 
ever,  the  preacher  was  probably  thinking,  not  so 
much  of  Unitarians  as  of  a  certain  kind  of  person 
often  found  in  this  neighborhood,  and  not  neces 
sarily  professing  any  particular  form  of  religion. 
We  all  know  the  type.  When  a  man  invariably 
has  money  in  the  bank,  and  is  respectable  and  re 
spected,  was  graduated  at  Harvard,  has  a  deco 
rous  wife  and  children,  has  never  been  carried 
away  by  any  passion  or  enthusiasm,  knows  the 
right  people,  and  conforms  strictly  to  the  customs 
of  good  society;  and  when  this  sort  of  thing  has 
been  going  on  for,  perhaps,  two  or  three  genera 
tions,  then  there  is  apt  to  creep  into  the  blood  a 
coldness  that  would  chill  the  heart  of  a  bronze 
statue.  Such  persons  are  really  degenerates  of 
their  peculiar  kind,  and  need  to  be  saved,  per 
haps  by  desperate  measures.  Let  them  elope 
with  the  cook;  let  them  get  religion  of  a  violent 
Methodistic,  or  of  an  intense  Ritualistic,  kind 
(the  two  forms  have  much  in  common) ;  or  if  they 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

cannot  get  religion,  let  them  get  a  dog,  give  him 
the  run  of  the  house,  love  him  and  spoil  him,  and 
so,  by  the  blessing  of  Providence,  their  salvation 
may  be  effected. 

Reformers  and  philanthropists  should  always 
keep  dogs,  in  order  that  the  spontaneous  element 
may  not  wholly  die  out  of  them.  Their  tendency 
is  to  regard  the  human  race  as  a  problem,  and 
particular  persons  as  'cases'  to  be  dealt  with,  not 
according  to  one's  impulses,  but  according  to 
certain  rules  approved  by  good  authority,  and 
supposed  to  be  consistent  with  sound  economic 
principles.  To  my  old  friend  -  — ,  who  once  liked 
me  for  myself,  without  asking  why,  I  have  long 
ceased  to  be  an  individual,  and  am  now  simply 
an  item  of  humanity  to  whom  he  owes  such  duty 
as  my  particular  wants  or  vices  would  seem  to 
indicate.  But  if  he  had  a  dog  he  could  not  re 
gard  him  in  that  impersonal  way,  or  worry  about 
the  dog's  morals:  he  would  simply  take  pleasure 
in  his  society,  and  love  him  for  what  he  was,  with 
out  considering  what  he  might  have  been. 

I  know  and  honor  one  philanthropist  who,  in 
middle  life  or  thereabout,  became  for  the  first 
time  the  possessor  of  a  dog ;  and  thenceforth  there 
was  disclosed  in  him  a  genuine  vein  of  sentiment 
and  affection  which  many  years  of  doing  good 
and  virtuous  living  had  failed  to  eradicate.  Often 
had  I  heard  of  his  civic  deeds  and  of  his  well- 
directed  charities,  but  my  heart  never  quite 
warmed  toward  him  until  I  learned  that,  with 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

spectacles  on  nose  and  comb  in  hand,  he  had 
spent  three  laborious  hours  in  painfully  going 
over  his  spaniel,  and  eliminating  those  parasitic 
guests  which  sometimes  infest  the  coat  of  the 
cleanest  and  most  aristocratic  dog.  I  am  not 
ashamed  to  say  that  I  have  a  confidence  in  his 
wisdom  now  which  I  did  not  have  before,  know 
ing  that  his  head  will  never  be  allowed  to  tyran 
nize  over  his  heart.  His  name  should  be  recorded 
here,  were  it  not  that  his  modesty  might  be  of 
fended  by  the  act.  (Three  letters  would  suffice  to 
print  it.) 

In  speaking  of  the  dog  as  a  kind  of  missionary 
in  the  household,  I  mean,  it  need  hardly  be  said, 
something  more  than  mere  ownership  of  the  ani 
mal.  It  will  not  suffice  to  pay  a  large  sum  for  a 
dog  of  fashionable  breed,  equip  him  with  a  costly 
collar,  and  then  relegate  him  to  the  stable  or  the 
kitchen.  He  should  be  one  of  the  family,  living 
on  equal  terms  with  the  others,  and  their  con 
stant  companion.  The  dog's  life  is  short  at  the 
best,  and  every  moment  of  it  will  be  needed  for 
his  development.  It  is  wonderful  how,  year  by 
year,  the  household  pet  grows  in  intelligence,  how 
many  words  he  learns  the  meaning  of,  how  quick 
he  becomes  in  interpreting  the  look,  the  tone  of 
voice,  the  mood  of  the  person  whom  he  loves.  He 
is  old  at  ten  or  eleven,  and  seldom  lives  beyond 
thirteen  or  fourteen.  If  he  lived  to  be  fifty,  he 
would  know  so  much  that  we  should  be  uneasy, 
perhaps  terrified,  in  his  presence. 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 
i  *  ' 

A  certain  amount  of  discipline  is  necessary  for 
a  dog.  If  left  to  his  own  devices,  he  is  apt  to  be 
come  somewhat  dissipated,  to  spend  his  evenings 
out,  to  scatter  among  many  the  affection  which 
should  be  reserved  for  a  few.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  a  dog  may  easily  receive  too  much  discip 
line;  he  becomes  like  the  child  of  a  despotic  father. 
A  dog  perfectly  trained,  from  the  martinet  point 
of  view,  —  one  who  never  'jumps  up'  on  you, 
never  lays  an  entreating  paw  on  your  arm,  nev 
er  gets  into  a  chair,  or  enters  the  drawing-room, 
-  such  a  dog  is  a  sad  sight  to  one  who  really 
knows  and  loves  the  animal.  It  is  against  his  na 
ture  to  be  so  repressed.  Over-careful  housewives, 
and  persons  who  are  burdened  with  costly  sur 
roundings,  talk  of  injury  to  carpets  and  other 
furniture  if  the  dog  has  a  right  of  entry  every 
where  in  the  house.  But  what  is  furniture  for? 
Is  it  for  display,  is  it  a  guaranty  of  the  wealth 
of  the  owners,  or  is  it  for  use?  Blessed  are  they 
whose  furniture  is  so  inexpensive  or  so  shabby 
that  children  and  dogs  are  not  excluded  from  its 
sacred  precincts.  Perhaps  the  happiest  house 
hold  to  which  I  ever  had  the  honor  of  being  ad 
mitted  was  one  where  it  was  sometimes  a  little 
difficult  to  find  a  comfortable  vacant  chair:  the 
dogs  always  took  the  arm-chairs.  Alas,  where  are 
those  hospitable  chairs  now?  Where  the  dogs 
that  used  to  sit  up  in  them,  and  wink  and  yawn, 
and  give  their  paws  in  humorous  embarrassment? 
'The  drawing-room  was  made  for  dogs,  and 

8 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

not  dogs  for  the  drawing-room,  *  would  be  Lady 
Barnes's  thesis,  did  she  formulate  it.  It  was 
this  same  Lady  Barnes  —  Rhoda  B  rough  ton's  — 
who  once  said,  'I  have  no  belief  in  Eliza,  the 
housemaid  I  leave  in  charge  here.  When  last  I 
came  down  from  London  the  dogs  were  so  un 
naturally  good  that  I  felt  sure  she  bullied  them. 
I  spoke  very  seriously  to  her,  and  this  time,  I  am 
glad  to  say,  they  are  as  disobedient  as  ever,  and 
have  done  even  more  mischief  than  when  I  am 
at  home. '  And  she  laughed  with  a  delicate  relish 
of  her  own  folly. 

Of  all  writers  of  fiction,  by  the  way,  is  there 
any  whose  dogs  quite  equal  those  of  Rhoda 
Broughton?  Even  the  beloved  author  of  Rab 
and  His  Friends,  even  Sir  Walter  himself,  with 
his  immortal  Dandie  Dinmonts,  has  not,  it  seems 
to  me,  given  us  such  life-like  and  home-like  pic 
tures  of  dogs  as  those  which  occur  in  her  novels. 
They  seem  to  be  there,  not  of  set  purpose, 
but  as  if  dogs  were  such  an  essential  part  of  her 
own  existence  that  they  crept  into  her  books 
almost  without  her  knowing  it.  No  room  in  her 
novels  is  complete  without  a  dog  or  two;  and 
every  remark  that  she  makes  about  them  has  the 
quality  of  a  caress.  Even  in  a  tragic  moment, 
the  heroine  cannot  help  observing,  that  'Mink 
is  lying  on  his  small  hairy  side  in  a  sunpatch,  with 
his  little  paws  crossed  like  the  hands  of  a  dying 
saint.'  'Mr.  Brown,'  that  dear,  faithful  mongrel, 
is  forever  associated  with  the  unfortunate  Joan; 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

and  Brenda's  'woufF  will  go  resounding  down 
the  halls  of  time  so  long  as  novels  are  read. 

Perhaps  the  final  test  of  anybody's  love  of  dogs 
is  willingness  to  permit  them  to  make  a  camping- 
ground  of  the  bed.  There  is  no  other  place  in  the 
world  that  suits  the  dog  quite  so  well.  On  the 
bed  he  is  safe  from  being  stepped  upon ;  he  is  out 
of  the  way  of  draughts;  he  has  a  commanding 
position  from  which  to  survey  what  goes  on  in 
the  world;  and,  above  all,  the  surface  is  soft  and 
yielding  to  his  outstretched  limbs.  No  mere  man 
can  ever  be  so  comfortable  as  a  dog  looks. 

Some  persons  object  to  having  a  dog  on  the 
bed  at  night;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  he  lies 
a  little  heavily  upon  one's  limbs;  but  why  be  so 
base  as  to  prefer  comfort  to  companionship !  To 
wake  up  in  the  dark  night,  and  put  your  hand  on 
that  warm  soft  body,  to  feel  the  beating  of  that 
faithful  heart  —  is  not  this  better  than  undis 
turbed  sloth?  The  best  night's  rest  I  ever  had 
was  once  when  a  cocker  spaniel  puppy,  who  had 
just  recovered  from  stomach-ache  (dose  one  to 
two  soda-mints),  and  was  a  little  frightened  by 
the  strange  experience,  curled  up  on  my  shoulder 
like  a  fur  tippet,  gently  pushed  his  cold,  soft  nose 
into  my  neck,  and  there  slept  sweetly  and  soundly 
until  morning. 

Companionship  with  his  master  is  the  dog's 
remedy  for  every  ill,  and  only  an  extreme  case 
will  justify  sending  him  away  or  boarding  him 
out.  To  put  a  dog  in  a  hospital,  unless  there  is 

10 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

some  surgical  or  other  like  necessity  for  doing  so, 
is  an  act  of  doubtful  kindness.  Many  and  many 
a  dog  has  died  from  homesickness.  If  he  is  ill, 
keep  him  warm  and  quiet,  give  him  such  simple 
remedies  as  you  would  give  to  a  child :  pour  beef 
tea  or  malted  milk  down  his  throat,  or  even  a 
little  whiskey,  if  he  is  weak  from  want  of  food; 
and  let  him  live  or  die,  as  did  our  fathers  and  our 
fathers'  dogs  —  at  home. 

Many  dogs  are  sensitive  to  an  excessive  degree, 
so  sensitive  indeed  that  any  correction  of  them, 
beyond  such  as  can  be  conveyed  by  a  word,  a- 
mounts  to  positive  cruelty.  A  dog  of  that  kind 
may  easily  be  thrown  by  harsh  treatment  into  a 
state  of  nervous  disorder,  and  will  be  really  un 
able  to  do  what  is  required  of  him.  In  that  state 
he  often  presents  an  appearance  of  obstinacy, 
whereas  in  fact  he  is  suffering  from  a  sort  of  nerv 
ous  atrophy  or  paralysis,  closely  resembling  that 
of  a  '  balky'  horse. 

This  nervous  temperament  makes  the  dog 
susceptible  to  misery  in  many  forms,  but  the 
worst  evil  that  can  befall  is  to  be  lost.  The  very 
words  'lost  dog'  call  up  such  pictures  of  canine 
misery  as  can  never  be  forgotten  by  those  who 
have  witnessed  them.  I  have  seen  a  lost  dog, 
lame,  emaciated,  wounded,  footsore,  hungry,  and 
thirsty,  yet  suffering  so  intensely  from  fear,  and 
loneliness,  and  despair,  —  from  the  mere  sense 
of  being  lost,  —  as  to  be  absolutely  unconscious 
of  his  bodily  condition.  The  mental  agony  was  so 

II 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

much  greater  that  it  swallowed  up  the  physical 
pain. 

A  little  Boston  terrier,  who  was  lost  in  a  large 
city  for  two  or  three  days,  became  so  wrecked 
in  his  nervous  system  that  no  amount  of  care  or 
petting  could  restore  him  to  equanimity,  and 
it  was  found  necessary  to  kill  him.  Oh,  reader, 
pass  not  by  the  lost  dog!  Succor  him  if  you  can; 
preserve  him  from  what  is  worse  than  death.  It 
is  easy  to  recognize  him  by  the  look  of  nervous 
terror  in  his  eye,  by  his  drooping  tail,  by  his  un 
certain  movements. 

There  is  a  remorseful  experience  of  my  own,  of 
which  I  should  be  glad  to  unburden  myself  to  the 
reader.  It  once  became  my  duty  to  kill  a  dog  af 
flicted  with  some  incurable  disease.  Instead  of 
doing  it  myself,  as  I  should  have  done,  I  took  him 
to  a  place  where  lost  dogs  are  received,  and  where 
those  for  whom  no  home  can  be  found  are  merci 
fully  destroyed.  There,  instead  of  myself  leading 
him  to  the  death-chamber,  as,  again,  I  should 
have  done,  I  handed  him  over  to  the  executioner. 
The  dog  was  an  abnormally  nervous  and  timid 
one;  and  as  he  was  dragged  most  unwillingly 
away,  he  turned  around,  as  nearly  as  he  could, 
and  cast  back  at  me  a  look  of  horror,  of  fear,  of 
agonized  appeal  —  a  look  that  has  haunted  me 
for  years. 

Whether  he  had  any  inkling  of  what  was  in 
store  for  him,  I  do  not  know,  but  it  is  highly  prob 
able  that  he  had.  Dogs  and  other  animals  are 

12 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

wonderful  mind-readers.  I  have  known  three 
cases  in  which  some  discussion  about  the  neces 
sity  of  killing  an  old  dog,  held  in  his  presence,  was 
quickly  followed  by  the  sudden,  unaccountable 
disappearance  of  the  animal;  and  no  tidings  of 
him  could  ever  be  obtained,  although  the  great 
est  pains  were  taken  to  obtain  them.  Horses  are 
inferior  only  to  dogs  in  this  capacity.  Often,  es 
pecially  in  the  case  of  vicious  or  half-broken 
horses,  an  intention  will  flash  from  the  mind  of  the 
horse  to  the  mind  of  the  rider  or  driver,  and  vice 
versa,  without  the  slightest  indication  being  given 
by  horse  or  man.  Men  who  ride  race-horses  have 
told  me  that  a  sudden  conviction  in  their  own 
minds,  in  the  course  of  a  race,  that  they  could 
not  win  has  passed  immediately  to  the  horse,  and 
caused  him  to  slacken  his  speed,  although  they 
had  not  ceased  to  urge  him.  It  is  notorious  in 
the  trotting  world  that  faint-hearted  and  pessi 
mistic  drivers  often  lose  races  which  they  ought 
to  win. 

As  to  remarkable  stories  about  this  or  that  ani 
mal,  perhaps  it  might  be  said  that  they  are  prob-  > 
ably  true  when  they  illustrate  the  animal's  per 
ceptive  abilities,  and  are  probably  false  when 
they  depend  upon  his  power  to  originate.  There 
appeared  lately  an  account  of  a  race  between 
loons  in  the  wild  state:  how  the  loons  got  to 
gether  and  arranged  the  preliminaries  (whether 
they  made  books  on  the  event  or  adopted  the 
pool  system  of  betting  was  not  stated),  how  the 

13 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

race  was  run,  or  rather  flown,  amid  intense  loon 
excitement,  and  how  the  victor  was  greeted  with 
screams  of  applause! 

Some  power  of  origination  animals,  and  dogs 
especially,  certainly  have.  There  is  the  familiar 
trick  which  dogs  play  when  one,  to  get  a  bone 
away  from  another,  rushes  off  a  little  space,  gives 
the  bark  which  signifies  the  presence  of  an  intru 
der,  then  comes  back  and  quietly  runs  away  with 
the  bone  which  the  other  dog,  in  his  curiosity 
to  see  who  is  coming,  has  impulsively  dropped. 
This  is  an  example,  not  of  reasoning  only,  but  of 
origination. 

In  general,  however,  when  dogs  surprise  us,  as 
they  frequently  do,  it  is  by  the  delicacy  and  acute- 
ness  of  their  perceptive  powers.  How  unerringly 
do  they  distinguish  between  different  classes  of 
persons,  as,  for  example,  between  the  members  of 
the  family  and  the  servants;  and  again,  between 
the  servants  and  the  friends  of  the  household! 
Unquestionably  the  dog  has  three  sets  of  man 
ners  for  these  three  classes  of  persons.  He  will 
take  liberties  in  the  kitchen  that  he  would  never 
dream  of  taking  in  the  dining-room.  We  have 
known  our  cook  to  fly  in  terror  from  the  kitchen 
because  Figaro,  a  masterful  cocker  spaniel, 
threatened  to  bite  her  if  she  did  not  give  him  a 
piece  of  meat  forthwith.  Figaro  reasoned  that 
the  cook  was  partly  Ms  cook,  and  that  he  had  a 
right  to  bully  her  if  he  could. 

As  for  the  different  members  of  the  family,  the 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

dog  will  '  size  them  up '  with  an  unerring  instinct. 
It  is  impossible  to  conceal  any  weakness  of  char 
acter  from  him;  and  if  you  are  strong,  he  will 
know  that,  too.    As  I  write  these  lines,  the  vision 
of  'Mr.  Guppy'  rises  before  me.     Mr.  Guppy 
was  a  very  small  Boston  terrier  with  a  white  head, 
but  otherwise  of  a  brindle  color.    He  had  a  beauti 
ful  'mug/  much  like  that  of  a  bull  dog,  with  a 
short  nose,  wide  jaws,  and  plenty  of  loose  skin 
hanging  about  his  stout  little  neck.     It  must  be 
admitted  that  he  was  somewhat  self-indulgent, 
being  continually  on  the  watch  for  a  chance  to  lie 
close  by  the  fire  —  a  situation  considered  by  his 
friends  to  be  unwholesome  for  him.    Mr.  Guppy 
understood  me  very  well.     He  knew  that  I  was  a 
poor,  weak,  easy-going,  absent-minded  creature, 
with  whom  he  could  take  liberties;  accordingly, 
when  we  were  alone  together,  the  rogue  would  lie 
sleeping  with  his  head  on  the  hearth,  while  I  was 
absorbed  in  my  book.    But  hark !  there  is  a  step  on 
the  stairs,  of  one  whom  Mr.  Guppy  both  loved  and 
feared  more  than  any  dog  ever  loved  or  feared 
me;  and  forthwith  the  little  impostor  would  rise 
and  crawl  softly  back  to  his  place  on  a  rug  in  the 
corner;  and  there  he  would  be  found  lying  and 
winking,  with  an  expression  of  perfect  innocence, 
when  the  disciplinarian  entered  the  room. 

Dogs  have  the  same  sensitiveness  that  we  as 
sociate  with  well-bred  men  and  women.  Their 
politeness  is  remarkable.  Offer  a  dog  water  when 
he  is  not  thirsty,  and  he  will  almost  always  take 

15 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

a  lap  or  two,  just  out  of  civility,  and  to  show  his 
gratitude.  I  know  a  group  of  dogs  that  never 
forget  to  come  and  tell  their  mistress  when  they 
have  had  their  dinner,  feeling  sure  that  she  will 
sympathize  with  them;  and  if  they  have  failed 
to  get  it,  they  will  notify  her  immediately  of  the 
omission.  If  you  happen  to  step  on  a  dog's  tail 
or  paw,  how  eagerly  —  after  one  irrepressible 
yelp  of  pain  —  will  he  tell  you  by  his  caresses 
that  he  knows  you  did  not  mean  to  hurt  him  and 
forgives  you ! 

In  their  relations  with  one  another,  also,  dogs 
have  a  keen  sense  of  etiquette.  A  well-known 
traveler  makes  this  unexpected  remark  about  a 
tribe  of  naked  black  men,  living  on  one  of  the 
South  Sea  Islands:  'In  their  everyday  intercourse 
there  is  much  that  is  stiff,  formal,  and  precise.' 
Almost  the  same  remark  might  be  made  about 
dogs.  Unless  they  are  on  very  intimate  terms, 
they  take  great  pains  never  to  brush  against  or 
even  to  touch  one  another.  For  one  dog  to  step 
over  another  is  a  dangerous  breach  of  etiquette 
unless  they  are  special  friends.  It  is  no  uncom 
mon  thing  for  two  dogs  to  belong  to  the  same  per 
son,  and  live  in  the  same  house,  and  yet  never 
take  the  slightest  notice  of  each  other.  We  have 
a  spaniel  so  dignified  that  he  will  never  permit 
another  member  of  the  dog  family  to  pillow  his 
head  on  him ;  but,  with  the  egotism  of  a  true  aris 
tocrat,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  make  use  of  the 
other  dogs  for  that  purpose. 

16 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

Often  canine  etiquette  is  so  subtle  that  one  has 
much  difficulty  in  following  it  out.  In  our  house 
hold  are  two  uncongenial  dogs,  who,  in  ordinary 
circumstances,  completely  ignore  each  other,  and 
between  whom  any  familiarity  would  be  resented 
fiercely.  And  yet,  when  we  are  all  out  walking,  if 
I  am  obliged  to  scold  or  punish  one  of  these  two, 
the  other  will  run  up  to  the  offender,  bark  at  him, 
and  even  jostle  him,  as  if  he  were  saying,  'Well, 
old  man,  you  got  it  that  time;  aren't  you  asham 
ed  of  yourself?'  And  the  other  dog,  feeling  that 
he  is  in  the  wrong,  I  suppose,  submits  meekly  to 
the  insult. 

A  family  of  six  dogs  used  to  pair  off  in  couples, 
each  couple  being  on  terms  of  special  intimacy 
and  affection;  and  besides  these  relationships, 
there  were  many  others  among  them.  For  exam 
ple,  they  all  deferred  to  the  oldest  dog,  although 
he  was  smaller  and  weaker  than  the  rest.  If  a 
fight  began,  he  would  jump  in  between  the  con 
testants  and  stop  it;  if  a  dog  misbehaved,  he 
would  rush  at  the  offender  with  a  warning  growl ; 
and  this  exercise  of  authority  was  never  resented. 
The  other  dogs  seemed  to  respect  his  weight  of 
years,  his  character,  which  was  of  the  highest, 
and  his  moral  courage,  which  was  undoubted. 
This  same  dog  —  his  name  was  Pedro  —  had 
many  human  traits.  He  and  his  companions 
slept  together  on  a  sofa  upstairs,  where,  of  a  cold 
night,  they  would  curl  up  together  in  an  indistin 
guishable  heap.  Sometimes  the  old  dog  would 

17 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

put  himself  to  bed  before  the  others,  and  then, 
finding  that  he  needed  the  warmth  and  compan 
ionship  of  their  presence,  he  would  go  into  the 
hall,  put  his  head  between  the  balusters,  and 
whine  softly  until  they  came  upstairs  to  join 
him. 

That  animals  reason  is  a  fact  of  everyday  ex 
perience.  That  they  can  communicate  their 
wants  and  feelings  to  one  another  and  to  man  is 
equally  plain.  '  When  a  cat  or  a  dog, '  wrote  the 
late  Mr.  Romanes,  'pulls  one's  dress  to  lead  one  to 
the  kittens  or  puppies  in  need  of  assistance,  the 
animal  is  behaving  in  the  same  manner  as  a  deaf 
mute  might  behave  when  invoking  assistance 
from  a  friend.  That  is  to  say,  the  animal  is  trans 
lating  the  logic  of  feelings  into  the  logic  of  signs ; 
and  so  far  as  this  particular  action  is  concerned, 
it  is  psychologically  indistinguishable  from  that 
which  is  performed  by  the  deaf  mute. ' 

Mentally,  we  are  not  so  many  epochs  removed 
from  the  other  animals,  and  emotionally  the  con 
nection  is  closer  yet.  I  will  not  discuss  the  ques 
tion  whether  dumb  animals  have  any  sense  of 
right  and  wrong.  I  believe  that  they  have  this 
sense  in  a  rudimentary  degree;  or  at  least  that  it 
is  latent  in  them,  and  may  be  developed.  The 
popular  instinctive  notions  about  animals,  the 
result  of  the  experience  of  the  race,  seem  to  justi 
fy  this  view.  '  I f  we  say  a  vicious  horse/  remarked 
Dr.  Arnold,  'why  not  a  virtuous  horse?*  And  we 
do  speak  of  a  *  kind '  horse. 

18 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

Moreover,  it  is  obvious  that  dogs  have  a  sense 
of  humor;  and  they  have  also  a  sense  of  shame, 
perfectly  distinct  from  the  fear  of  punishment.  Of 
this  sense  of  shame  let  me  give  one  example.  The 
dog's  eyesight,  so  far  at  least  as  stationary  objects 
are  concerned,  is  very  poor,  his  real  reliance  being 
on  his  sense  of  smell ;  and  I  have  often  seen  a  dog 
mistake  one  of  his  own  family  for  a  strange  ani 
mal,  run  toward  him,  with  every  sign  of  hostility, 
and  then,  when  he  came  within  a  few  feet  of  the 
other  dog,  suddenly  drop  his  tail  between  his  legs 
and  slink  away,  as  if  he  feared  that  somebody 
had  noticed  his  absurd  mistake. 

Can  it  be  that  an  animal  should  possess  a  sense 
of  humor  and  a  sense  of  shame,  without  having 
also  some  elementary  sense  of  right  and  wrong? 
But  even  if  it  be  thought  that  he  is  devoid  of  that 
sense,  it  is  certain  that  he  has  those  kindly  im 
pulses  from  which  it  has  been  developed.  All 
that  is  best  in  man  springs  from  something  which 
is  practically  the  same  in  the  dog  that  it  is  in  him, 
namely,  the  instinct  of  pity  or  benevolence.  To 
that  instinct,  as  it  exists  in  the  lower  animals,  Dar 
win  attributed  the  origin  of  conscience  in  man; 
and  there  are  now  few,  if  any,  philosophers  who 
would  give  a  different  account  of  it. 

I  have  seen  a  pup  not  six  months  old  run  to 
comfort  another  pup  that  cried  out  from  pain; 
and  the  impulse  that  prompted  this  act  was  es 
sentially  the  same  as  that  which  impels  the  noblest 
of  mankind  when  they  befriend  the  poor  or  the 

19 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

afflicted.  We  are  akin  to  the  lower  animals  moral 
ly,  as  well  as  physically  and  mentally. 

But  this  is  a  modern  discovery.  It  is  astonish 
ing  and  confusing  to  realize  how  little  organized 
Christianity  has  done  for  the  lower  animals.  The 
ecclesiastical  conception  of  them  was  simply  that 
they  were  creatures  without  souls,  and  therefore 
had  no  rights  as  against,  or  at  the  hands  of,  man 
kind.  To  this  day  that  conception  remains,  al 
though  it  is  qualified,  of  course,  by  other  and 
more  humane  considerations.  Even  Cardinal 
Newman  said,  - 

'We  have  no  duties  toward  the  brute  creation; 
there  is  no  relation  of  justice  between  them  and 
us.  Of  course,  we  are  bound  not  to  treat  them  ill, 
for  cruelty  is  an  offense  against  the  holy  law 
which  our  Maker  has  written  on  our  hearts,  and 
it  is  displeasing  to  Him.  But  they  can  claim 
nothing  at  our  hand ;  into  our  hand  they  are  abso 
lutely  delivered.  We  may  use  them,  we  may 
destroy  them  at  our  pleasure:  not  our  wanton 
pleasure,  but  still  for  our  own  ends,  for  our  own 
benefit  and  satisfaction,  provided  that  we  can 
give  a  rational  account  of  what  we  do. ' 

This  position,  although  not  perhaps  cruel  in  it 
self,  inevitably  results  in  immeasurable  cruelties. 
When  an  English  traveler  remonstrated  with  a 
Spanish  lady  for  throwing  a  sick  kitten  out  of  the 
second-story  window,  she  justified  herself  by  say 
ing  that  the  kitten  had  no  soul;  and  that  is  the 
national  point  of  view. 

20 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

Protestantism  has  been  almost  as  indifferent 
as  Catholicism  to  the  lower  animals.  In  fact,  the 
conscience  which  exists  outside  of  the  church, 
Catholic  or  Protestant,  has  in  this  matter,  out 
stripped  the  conscience  of  the  church.  '  Cruelty, ' 
said  Du  Maurier,  'is  the  only  unpardonable  sin'; 
and  the  world  is  slowly  but  surely  coming  to  that 
opinion.  The  long-deferred  awakening  of  man 
kind  to  the  sufferings  of  dumb  animals  was  not 
due  to  a  decline  of  the  ecclesiastical  conception 
of  them,  although  it  has  declined ;  nor  even  to  the 
new  knowledge  concerning  the  common  origin  of 
man  and  beast  —  indeed,  it  slightly  preceded  that 
knowledge;  but  it  was  due  to  the  gradual  en 
lightenment  and  moral  improvement  of  the  race, 
especially  of  the  English-speaking  race. 

The  nineteenth  century,  as  we  are  often  told, 
saw  more  discoveries  and  inventions  than  had 
been  made  in  the  preceding  six  thousand  years; 
but  I  believe  that  in  future  ages  not  one  of  those 
discoveries  and  inventions,  nor  all  together,  will 
bulk  so  large  as  factors  in  the  development  and 
uplifting  of  man,  as  will  those  humane  laws  and 
societies  which  first  came  into  existence  in  that 
century. 

We  overvalue  intellectual  as  compared  with 
moral  and  emotional  gifts.  The  material  civiliza 
tion  upon  which  we  pride  ourselves  is  almost 
wholly  the  achievement  of  the  intellect.  Fame 
and  wealth,  luxury,  cultivation,  and  leisure,  — 
all  the  big  prizes  of  the  world,  in  fact,  —  are  ob- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

tained  by  the  successful  exercise  of  the  intellect. 
The  moral  qualities,  of  themselves,  can  procure 
us  nothing  but  a  clear  conscience,  and  the  ap 
proval,  perhaps  mixed  with  contempt,  of  our 
neighbors. 

And  yet,  when  the  intellectual  qualities  are 
brought  to  the  test  of  reality;  when  one's  view  of 
them  is  not  clouded  by  pride,  avarice,  or  passion, 
then  how  amazingly  does  their  value  shrink  and 
shrivel!  When  a  man  lies  on  his  deathbed,  for 
example,  his  intellectual  achievements,  though  of 
the  highest  order,  will  seem  as  nothing  to  him 
—  he  will  ask  himself  simply  whether  he  has  lived 
a  good  or  a  bad  life ;  and  after  his  death  his  fam 
ily  and  his  friends  will  look  at  the  matter  in  pre 
cisely  the  same  way. 

Even  the  progress  of  mankind  is  far  more  moral 
than  intellectual.  Competent  authorities  tell  us 
that  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  to-day  is  mentally  inferi 
or  to  the  Greek  who  lived  two  thousand  years  ago : 
and  if  the  human  race  has  improved  during  that 
time,  it  is  not  so  much  because  man  has  advanced 
in  knowledge  as  because  he  has  acquired  more 
sympathy  with  his  inferiors,  be  they  brute  or  hu 
man,  more  generosity,  more  mercy  toward  them. 
Not  Stevenson,  nor  Faraday,  nor  Morse,  nor 
Fulton,  nor  Bell,  did  so  much  for  the  human  race, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  other  animals,  as  did  that 
dueling  Irishman  who,  in  the  year  1822,  proposed 
in  the  English  Parliament,  amid  shrieks  and 
howls  of  derision,  what  afterward  became  the 

22 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

first  law  for  the  protection  of  dumb  animals  ever 
placed  on  the  statute-book  of  any  country.  Ev 
ery  movement  for  the  relief  of  the  brute  creation 
has  originated  in  England ;  and  when  we  damn,  as 
we  righteously  may,  John  Bull  for  one  thing  and 
another,  let  us  remember  this  fact  to  his  eternal 
honor ! 

It  is  hard  to  part  from  an  old  dog- friend  with 
no  hope  of  ever  meeting  him  again,  hard  to  believe 
that  the  spirit  of  love  which  burned  so  steadfastly 
in  him  is  quenched  forever.  But  for  those  who 
hold  what  I  have  called  the  ecclesiastical  concep 
tion  of  the  lower  animals,  no  other  view  is  possi 
ble.  That  devout  Catholic  and  exquisite  poet, 
Dr.  Parsons,  has  beautifully  expressed  this  fact: 

When  parents  die  there's  many  a  word  to  say  — 

Kind  words,  consoling  —  one  can  always  pray; 

When  children  die  't  is  natural  to  tell 

Their  mother,  ' Certainly  with  them  't  is  well!' 

But  for  a  dog,  't  was  all  the  life  he  had, 

Since  death  is  end  of  dogs,  or  good  or  bad. 

This  was  his  world,  he  was  contented  here; 

Imagined  nothing  better,  naught  more  dear, 

Than  his  young  mistress;  sought  no  higher  sphere; 

Having  no  sin,  asked  not  to  be  forgiven; 

Ne'er  guessed  at  God  nor  ever  dreamed  of  heaven. 

Now  he  has  passed  away,  so  much  of  love 

Goes  from  our  life,  without  one  hope  above! 

But  is  there  no  hope?    Is  there  not  as  much  - 
or,  if  the  reader  prefers,  as  little  —  hope  for  the 
dog  as  there  is  for  man?    I  remember  reading 

23 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

years  ago  in  a  prominent  magazine  the  statement 
that  doubtless  a  few  men,  the  very  wickedest, 
will  become  extinct  at  death,  whereas  the  rest  of 
mankind  will  be  immortal.  This  view  had  some 
adherents  then,  but  would  now  be  regarded  by 
almost  everybody  as  irrational.  Who  can  believe 
that  between  the  best  and  the  worst  man  there 
is  any  such  gulf  as  would  justify  so  diverse  a  fate ! 

Moreover  we  have  learned  that  there  are  no 
chasms  or  jumps  in  nature.  One  thing  slides  into 
another;  every  creature  is  a  link  between  two 
other  creatures;  and  man  himself  can  be  traced 
back  physically,  mentally,  and  morally,  to  the 
lower  animals.  Is  it  not  then  reasonable  to  sup 
pose  that  immortality  belongs  to  all  forms  of  life 
or  to  none?  that  if  man  is  immortal,  the  dog  is 
immortal,  too?  Even  to  speculate  upon  this  sub 
ject  seems  almost  ridiculous,  our  knowledge  is  so 
limited ;  and  yet  it  is  hard  to  refrain  from  specu 
lation.  The  transmigration  of  souls  may  be  a 
fact,  or  men  and  dogs  and  all  other  forms  of  life 
may  be  simply  forms,  temporary  phases,  pro 
ceeding  from  one  source,  and  returning  thereto. 
But  alas,  every  supposition  that  we  can  make  is 
rendered  almost,  if  not  quite,  untenable  by  the 
mere  fact  that  the  human  intellect  has  conceived 
it  —  it  is  so  unlikely  that  we  should  hit  upon  the 
right  solution! 

In  this  situation,  what  we  seem  bound  to  do  is 
to  refrain  from  hasty,  and  especially  from  egotis 
tic  conclusions,  to  keep  our  minds  open,  to  re- 

24 


DOGS  AND  MEN 

gard  the  lower  animals,  not  only  with  pity,  but 
with  a  certain  reverence.  We  do  not  know  what 
or  whence  they  are ;  but  we  do  know  that  their 
nature  resembles  ours;  that  they  have  Individual 
ity,  as  we  have  it;  that  they  feel  pain,  both  physi 
cal  and  mental ;  that  they  are  capable  of  affection ; 
that,  although  innocent,  as  we  believe,  their  suf 
ferings  have  been,  and  are,  unspeakable.  Is  there 
no  mystery  here? 

To  many  men,  to  most  men,  perhaps,  a  dog  is 
simply  an  animated  machine,  developed  or  cre 
ated  for  the  convenience  of  the  human  race.  It 
may  be  so ;  and  yet  again  it  may  be  that  the  dog 
has  his  own  rightful  place  in  the  universe,  irre 
spective  and  independent  of  man,  and  that  an 
injury  done  to  him  is  an  insult  to  the  Creator. 


Jungle  Night 

By  William  Beebe 


WITHIN  gun-reach  in  front  of  me  trudged  my 
little  Akawai  Indian  hunter.  He  turned  his  head 
suddenly,  his  ears  catching  some  sound  which 
mine  had  missed,  and  I  saw  that  his  profile  was 
rather  like  that  of  Dante.  Instantly  the  thought 
spread  and  the  simile  deepened.  Were  we  two 
not  all  alone?  and  this  unearthly  hour  and  light 
-  Then  I  chuckled  softly,  but  the  silence  that  the 
chuckle  shattered  shrank  away  and  made  it  a 
loud,  coarse  sound,  so  that  I  involuntarily  drew 
in  myJbrejjth^/T?ut  iF~was~^a1ty~  amusing,  the" 
thought  ofDante  setting  out  on  a  hunt  for  kinka- 
jous  and  giant  armadillos.  Jeremiah  looked  at 
me  wonderingly,  and  we  went  on  in  silence.  And 
for  the  next  mile  Dante  vanished  from  my 
thoughts  and  I  mused  upon  the  sturdy  little  red 
man.  Jeremiah  was  his  civilized  name;  he  would 
never  tell  me  his  real  one.  It  seemed  so  unsuited 
to  him  that  I  thought  up  one  still  less  appropri 
ate  and  called  him  Nupee  —  which  4s  the  three- 

26 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

toed  sloth ;  and  in  his  quiet  way  he  saw  the  humor 
of  it,  for  a  more  agile  human  being  never  lived. 

Nupee's  face  was  unclouded,  but  his  position 
as  hunter  to  our  expedition  had  brought  decisions 
and  responsibilities  which  he  had  not  known  be 
fore.  The  simple  life,  —  the  unruffled  existence 
in  the  little  open  benab,  with  hammock,  cassava 
field,  and  an  occasional  hunt,  —  this  was  of  the 
past.  A  wife  had  come,  slipping  quietly  into  his 
life,  Indian-fashion;  and  now,  before  the  baby  ar 
rived,  decisions  had  to  be  made.  Nupee  longed 
for  some  store  shoes  and  a  suit  of  black  clothes. 
He  had  owned  a  big  benab  which  he  himself  had 
built;  but  a  godmother,  like  the  cowbird  in  a 
warbler's  nest,  had  gradually  but  firmly  ousted 
him  and  had  filled  it  with  diseased  relatives,  so 
that  it  was  unpleasant  to  visit.  He  now,  to  my 
knowledge,  owned  a  single  shirt  and  a  pair  of 
short  trousers. 

The  shoes  were  achieved.  I  detected  in  him 
qualities  which  I  knew  that  I  should  find  in  some 
one,  as  I  do  on  every  expedition,  and  I  made  him 
perform  some  unnecessary  labor  and  gave  him 
the  shoes.  But  the  clothes  would  cost  five  dol 
lars,  a  month's  wages,  and  he  had  promised  to 
get  married  —  white-fashion  —  in  another  month, 
and  that  would  consume  several  times  five  dol 
lars.  I  did  not  offer  to  help  him  decide.  His 
Akawai  marriage  ceremony  seemed  not  without 
honor,  and  as  for  its  sincerity  —  I  had  seen  the 
two  together.  But  my  lips  were  sealed.  I  could 

27 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

not  tell  him  that  a  recementing  of  the  ritual  of  his 
own  tribe  did  not  seem  quite  the  equal  of  a  five- 
dollar  suit  of  clothes.  That  was  a  matter  for  in 
dividual  decision. 

But  to-night  I  think  that  we  both  had  put  all 
our  worries  and  sorrows  far  away,  and  I  memory 
as  well ;  and  I  felt  sympathy  in  the  quiet,  pliant 
gait  which  carried  him  so  swiftly  over  the  sandy 
trail.  I  knew  Nupee  now  for  what  he  was  —  the 
one  for  whom  I  am  always  on  the  lookout,  the  ex 
ceptional  one,  the  super-servant,  worthy  of  friend 
ship  as  an  equal.  I  had  seen  his  uncle  and  his 
cousins.  They  were  Indians,  nothing  more.  Nu 
pee  had  slipped  into  the  place  left  vacant  for  a 
time  by  Aladdin,  and  by  Satan  and  Shimosaka, 
by  Drojak  and  Trujillo  —  all  exceptional,  all 
faithful,  all  servants  first  and  then  friends.  I  say 
'for  a  time' —  for  they  all  hoped,  and  I  think  still 
hope  with  me,  that  we  shall  meet  and  travel  and 
camp  together  again,  whether  in  the  Cinghalese 
thorn-bush,  or  Himalayan  daks,  in  Dyak  canoes 
or  among  the  camphor  groves  of  Sakarajama. 

Nupee  and  I  had  not  been  thrown  together 
closely.  This  had  proved  a  static  expedition, 
settled  in  one  place,  with  no  dangers  to  speak  of, 
no  real  roughing  it,  and  we  met  only  after  each 
hunting  trip.  But  the  magic  of  a  full  moon  had 
lured  me  from  my  laboratory  table,  and  here  we 
were,  we  two,  plodding  junglewards,  becoming 
better  acquainted  in  silence  than  I  have  often 
achieved  with  much  talk. 

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JUNGLE  NIGHT 

It  was  nearly  midnight.  We  traversed  a  broad 
trail  of  white  sand,  between  lines  of  saplings  of 
pale-barked  rubber  trees,  flooded,  saturated,  with 
milky-gray  light.  Not  a  star  appeared  in  the 
cloudless  sky,  which,  in  contrast  to  the  great 
silver  moon-plaque,  was  blue-black.  These  open 
sandy  stretches,  so  recently  etched  into  what  had 
been  primitive  jungle,  were  too  glowing  with  light 
for  most  of  the  nocturnal  creatures  who,  in  dark 
ness,  flew  and  ran  and  hunted  about  in  them. 
And  the  lovers  of  twilight  were  already  come  and 
gone.  The  stage  was  vacant  save  for  one  actor  - 
the  nighthawk  of  the  silvery  collar,  whose  eerie 
wheeeo!  or  more  leisurely  and  articulate  who-are- 
you?  was  queried  from  stump  and  log.  There 
was  in  it  the  same  liquid  tang,  the  virile  ringing  of 
skates  on  ice,  which  enriches  the  cry  of  the  whip- 
poor-will  in  our  country  lanes. 

Where  the  open  trail  skirted  a  hillside  we  came 
suddenly  upon  a  great  gathering  of  these  goat 
suckers,  engaged  in  some  strange  midnight  revel. 
Usually  they  roost  and  hunt  and  call  in  solitude, 
but  here  at  least  forty  were  collected  on  the  white 
sand  within  an  area  of  a  few  yards.  We  stopped 
and  watched.  They  were  dancing  —  or,  rather, 
popping,  as  corn  pops  in  a  hopper.  One  after  an 
other,  or  a  half  dozen  at  a  time,  they  bounced  up 
a  foot  or  two  from  the  ground  and  flopped  back, 
at  the  instant  of  leaving  and  returning  uttering  a 
sudden,  explosive  wop!  This  they  kept  up  un 
ceasingly  for  the  five  minutes  we  gave  to  them, 

29 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

and  our  passage  interrupted  them  for  only  a  mo 
ment.  Later  we  passed  single  birds  which  pop 
ped  and  wopped  in  solitary  state;  whether  prac 
ticing,  or  snobbishly  refusing  to  perform  in  pub 
lic,  only  they  could  tell.  It  was  a  scene  not  soon 
forgotten. 

Suddenly  before  us  rose  the  jungle,  raw-edged, 
with  border  zone  of  bleached,  ashamed  trunks 
and  lofty  branches  white  as  chalk,  of  dead  and 
dying  trees.  For  no  jungle  tree,  however  hardy, 
can  withstand  the  blasting  of  violent  sun  after 
the  veiling  of  emerald  foliage  is  torn  away.  As 
the  diver  plunges  beneath  the  waves,  so,  after  one 
glance  backward  over  the  silvered  landscape,  I 
passed  at  a  single  stride  into  what  seemed  by  con 
trast  inky  blackness,  relieved  by  the  trail  ahead, 
which  showed  as  does  a  ray  of  light  through  closed 
eyelids.  As  the  chirruping  rails  climbed  among 
the  roots  of  the  tall  cat-tails  out  yonder,  so  we 
now  crept  far  beneath  the  level  of  the  moonlit 
foliage.  The  silvery  landscape  had  been  shifted 
one  hundred,  two  hundred  feet  above  the  earth. 
We  had  become  lords  of  creation  in  name  alone, 
threading  our  way  humbly  among  the  fungi  and 
toad-stools,  able  only  to  look  aloft  and  wonder 
what  it  was  like.  And  for  a  long  time  no  voice 
answered  to  tell  us  whether  any  creature  lived 
and  moved  in  the  tree-tops. 

The  tropical  jungle  by  day  is  the  most  wonder 
ful  place  in  the  world.  At  night  I  am  sure  it  is 
the  most  weirdly  beautiful  of  all  places  outside 

30 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

the  world.  For  it  is  primarily  unearthly,  unreal; 
and  at  last  I  came  to  know  why.  In  the  light 
of  the  full  moon  it  was  rejuvenated.  The  simile 
of  theatrical  scenery  was  always  present  to  the 
mind,  the  illusion  lying  especially  in  the  complete 
ness  of  transformation  from  the  jungle  by  day 
light.  The  theatrical  effect  was  heightened  by 
the  sense  of  being  in  some  vast  building.  This 
was  due  to  the  complete  absence  of  any  breath 
of  air.  Not  a  leaf  moved;  even  the  pendulous 
air-roots  reaching  down  their  seventy-foot  plum 
mets  for  the  touch  of  soil  did  not  sway  a  hair's 
breadth.  The  throb  of  the  pulse  set  the  rhythm 
for  one's  steps.  The  silence,  for  a  time,  was  as 
perfect  as  the  breathlessness.  It  was  a  wonder 
fully  ventilated  amphitheatre ;  the  air  was  as  free 
from  any  feeling  of  tropical  heat,  as  it  lacked  all 
crispness  of  the  north.  It  was  exactly  the  tem 
perature  of  one's  skin.  Heat  and  cold  were  for 
k  the  moment  as  unthinkable  as  wind. 

Offers  body  seemed  wholly  negligible.  In  soft 
padding  moccasins  and  easy  swinging  gait,  close 
behind  my  Indian  hunter,  and  in  such  khaki 
browns  that  my  body  was  almost  invisible  to  my 
own  downward  glance,  I  was  conscious  only  of 
the  play  of  my  senses :  of  two  at  first,  sight  and 
smell ;  later,  of  hearing.  The  others  did  not  exist. 
We  two  were  unattached,  impersonal,  moving 
without  effort  or  exertion.  It  was  magic,  and  I 
was  glad  that  I  had  only  my  Akawai  for  compan 
ion,  for  it  was  magic  that  a  word  would  have 

31 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

shattered.  Yet  there  was  this  wonderfully  satis 
fying  thing  about  it,  that  most  magic  lacks:  it 
exists  at  present,  to-day,  perhaps,  at  least  once  a 
month,  and  I  know  that  I  shall  experience  it 
again.  When  I  go  to  the  window  and  look  out 
upon  the  city  night,  I  find  all  extraneous  light 
emaciated  and  shattered  by  the  blare  of  gas  and 
electricity,  but  from  one  upreaching  tower  I  can 
see  reflected  a  sheen  which  is  not  generated  in  any 
power-house  of  earth.  Then  I  know  that  within 
the  twenty-four  hours  the  terai  jungles  of  Garh- 
wal,  the  tree-ferns  of  Pahang,  and  the  mighty 
moras  which  now  surround  us,  were  standing  in 
silvery  silence  and  in  the  peace  which  only  the 
wilderness  knows. 

I  soon  took  the  lead  and  slackened  the  pace  to 
a  slow  walk.  Every  few  minutes  we  stood  mo 
tionless,  listening  with  mouth  as  well  as  ears. 
For  no  one  who  has  not  listened  in  such  silence 
can  realize  how  important  the  mouth  is.  Like 
the  gill  of  old  which  gave  it  origin,  our  ear  has 
still  an  entrance  inward  as  well  as  outward,  and 
the  sweep  of  breath  and  throb  of  the  blood  are 
louder  than  we  ever  suspect.  When  at  an  opera 
or  concert  I  see  some  one  sitting  rapt,  listening 
with  open  mouth,  I  do  not  think  of  it  as  ill-bred. 
I  know  it  for  unconscious  and  sincere  absorption 
based  on  an  excellent  physical  reason. 

It  was  early  spring  in  the  tropics;  insect  life 
was  still  in  the  gourmand  stage,  or  that  of  pupal 
sleep.  The  final  period  of  pipe  and  fiddle  had 

32 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

not  yet  arrived,  so  that  there  was  no  hum  from 
the  underworld.  The  flow  of  sap  and  the  spread 
of  petals  were  no  less  silent  than  the  myriad 
creatures  which,  I  knew,  slumbered  or  hunted  on 
every  side.  It  was  as  if  I  had  slipped  back  one 
dimension  in  space  and  walked  in  a  shadow 
world.  But  these  shadows  were  not  all  colorless. 
Although  the  light  was  strained  almost  barren 
by  the  moon  mountains,  yet  the  glow  from  the 
distant  lava  and  craters  still  kept  something  of 
color,  and  the  green  of  the  leaves,  great  and  small, 
showed  as  a  rich  dark  olive.  The  afternoon's 
rain  had  left  each  one  filmed  with  clear  water, 
and  this  struck  back  the  light  as  polished  silver. 
There  was  no  tempered  illumination.  The  trail 
ahead  was  either  black,  or  a  solid  sheet  of  light. 
Here  and  there  in  the  jungle  on  each  side,  where 
a  tree  had  fallen,  or  a  flue  of  clear  space  led  moon- 
wards,  the  effect  was  of  cold  electric  light  seen 
through  trees  in  city  parks.  When  such  a  shaft 
struck  down  upon  us,  it  surpassed  simile.  I  have 
seen  old  paintings  in  Belgian  cathedrals  of  celes 
tial  light  which  now  seems  less  imaginary. 

At  last  the  silence  was  broken,  and  like  the  first 
breath  of  the  trade-wind  which  clouds  the  Mazar- 
uni  surface,  the  mirror  of  silence  was  never  quite 
clear  again  —  or  so  it  seemed.  My  northern 
mind,  stored  with  sounds  of  memory,  never 
instinctively  accepted  a  new  voice  of  the  jungle 
for  what  it  was.  Each  had  to  go  through  a  refer 
ence  clearing-house  of  sorts.  It  was  like  the 

33 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

psychological  reaction  to  words  or  phrases.  Any 
strange  wail  or  scream  striking  suddenly  upon 
my  ear  instantly  crystallized  some  vision  of  the 
past  —  some  circumstance  or  adventure  fraught 
with  similar  sound.  Then,  appreciably  as  a  sec 
ond  thought,  came  the  keen  concentration  of 
every  sense  to  identify  this  new  sound,  to  hear  it 
again,  to  fix  it  in  mind  with  its  character  and  its 
meaning.  Perhaps  at  some  distant  place  and  time, 
in  utterly  incongruous  surroundings,  it  may  in 
turn  flash  into  consciousness  —  a  memory-simile 
stimulated  by  some  sound  of  the  future. 


T~ 


II 


I  stood  in  a  patch  of  moonlight  listening  to  the 
baying  of  a  hound  —  or  so  I  thought:  that  musical 
ululation  which  links  man's  companion  wolf- 
wards.  Then  I  thought  of  the  packs  of  wild  hunt 
ing  dogs,  the  dreaded  '  warracabra  tigers, '  and  I 
turned  to  the  Indian  at  my  elbow,  full  of  hopeful 
expectation.  With  his  quiet  smile  he  whispered, 
'  Kunama, '  and  I  knew  I  had  heard  the  giant 
tree-frog  of  Guiana  —  a  frog  of  size  and  voice  well 
in  keeping  with  these  mighty  jungles.  I  knew 
these  were  powerful  beenas  with  the  Indians, 
tokens  of  good  hunting,  and  every  fortunate 
benab  would  have  its  dried  mummy  frog  hung  up 
with  the  tail  of  the  giant  armadillo  and  other 
charms.  Well  might  these  batrachians  arouse 
profound  emotions  among  the  Indians,  familiar 
as  they  are  with  the  strange  beings  of  the  forest. 

34 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

I  could  imagine  the  great  goggle-eyed  fellow 
sprawled  high  near  the  roof  of  the  jungle,  clutch 
ing  the  leaves  with  his  vacuum-cupped  toes.  The 
moonlight  would  make  him  ghostly  —  a  pastel 
frog ;  but  in  the  day  he  flaunted  splashes  of  azure 
and  green  on  his  scarlet  body. 

At  a  turn  in  the  trail  we  squatted  and  waited 
for  what  the  jungle  might  send  of  sight  or  sound. 
And  in  whispers  Nupee  told  me  of  the  big  frog 
kunama,  and  its  ways.  It  never  came  to  the 
ground,  or  even  descended  part  way  down  the 
trees;  and  by  some  unknown  method  of  distilla 
tion  it  made  little  pools  of  its  own  in  deep  hol 
lows,  and  there  lived.  And  this  water  was  thick 
like  honey  and  white  like  milk,  and  when  stirred 
became  reddish.  Besides  which,  it  was  very  bit 
ter.  If  a  man  drank  of  it,  forever  after  he  hopped 
each  night  and  clasped  all  the  trees  which  he  en 
countered,  endlessly  endeavoring  to  ascend  them 
and  always  failing.  And  yet, .  if  he  could  once 
manage  to  reach  a  pool  of  kunama  water  in  an  un 
cut  tree  and  drink,  his  manhood  would  return 
and  his  mind  be  healed. 

When  the  Indians  desired  this  beena,  they 
marked  a  tree  whence  a  frog  called  at  night,  and  in 
the  daytime  cut  it  down.  Forming  a  big  circle, 
they  searched  and  found  the  frog,  and  forthwith 
smoked  it  and  rubbed  it  on  arrows  and  bow  before 
they  went  out.  I  listened  gravely  and  found 
that  it  all  fitted  in  with  the  magic  of  the  night. 

35 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

If  an  Indian  had  appeared  down  the  trail,  hop 
ping  endlessly  and  gripping  the  trunks,  gazing 
upward  with  staring  eyes,  I  should  not  have 
thought  it  more  strange  than  the  next  thing  that 
really  happened. 

We  had  settled  on  our  toes  in  another  squat- 
ting-place  —  a  dark  aisle  with  only  scattered 
flecks  of  light.  The  silence  and  breathlessness  of 
the  moon-craters  could  have  been  no  more  com 
plete  than  that  which  enveloped  us.  My  eye 
wandered  from  spot  to  spot,  when  suddenly  I  be 
gan  to  think  of  that  great  owl-like  goatsucker, 
the  '  poor-me-one. '  We  had  shot  one  at  Kala- 
coon  a  month  before  and  no  others  had  called 
since,  and  I  had  not  thought  of  the  species  again. 
Quite  without  reason  I  began  to  think  of  the  bird, 
of  its  wonderful  markings,  of  the  eyes  which 
years  ago  in  Trinidad  I  had  made  to  glow  like  iri 
descent  globes  in  the  light  of  a  flash  —  and  then 
a  poor-me-one  called  behind  us,  not  fifty  feet  a- 
way.  Even  this  did  not  seem  strange  among 
these  surroundings.  It  was  an  interesting  hap 
pening,  one  which  I  have  experienced  many  times 
in  my  life.  It  may  have  been  just  another  coinci 
dence.  I  am  quite  certain  it  was  not.  In  any 
event  it  was  a  Dantesque  touch,  emphasized  by 
the  character  of  the  call  —  the  wail  of  a  lost  soul 
being  as  good  a  simile  as  any  other.  It  started  as 
a  high,  trembling  wail,  the  final  cry  being  lost  in 
the  depths  of  whispered  woe :  — 

36 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

Oo ooh! 

oh! 
oh! 
oh! 
oh! 
oh! 

Nupee  never  moved ;  only  his  lips  formed  the  name 
by  which  he  knew  it  —  kalawoe.  Whatever  else 
characterized  the  sounds  of  the  jungle  at  night, 
none  became  monotonous  or  common.  Five 
minutes  later  the  great  bird  called  to  us  from  far, 
far  away,  as  if  from  another  round  of  purgatory  — 
an  eerie  lure  to  enter  still  deeper  into  the  jungle 
depths.  We  never  heard  it  again. 

Nature  seems  to  have  apportioned  the  voices 
of  many  of  her  creatures  with  sensitive  regard  for 
their  environment.  Sombre  voices  seem  fittingly 
to  be  associated  with  subdued  light,  and  joyous 
notes  with  the  blaze  of  sunlit  twigs  and  open 
meadows.  A  bobolink's  bubbling  carol  is  un 
thinkable  in  a  jungle,  and  the  strain  of  a  wood 
pewee  on  a  sunny  hillside  would  be  like  an  organ 
playing  dance-music.  This  is  even  more  pro 
nounced  in  the  tropics,  where,  quite  aside  from 
any  mental  association  on  my  part,  the  voices 
and  calls  of  the  jungle  reflect  the  qualities  of  that 
twilight  world.  The  poor-me-one  proves  too 
much.  He  is  the  very  essence  of  night,  his  wings 
edged  with  velvet  silence,  his  plumage  the  min 
gled  concentration  of  moss  and  lichens  and  dead 
wood. 

37 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

I  was  about  to  rise  and  lead  Nupee  still  farther 
into  the  gloom  when  the  jungle  showed  another 
mood  —  a  silent  whimsy,  the  humor  of  which  I 
could  not  share  with  the  little  red  man.  Close 
to  my  face,  so  near  that  it  startled  me  for  a  mo 
ment,  over  the  curved  length  of  a  long,  narrow 
caladium  leaf,  there  came  suddenly  two  brilliant 
lights.  Steadily  they  moved  onward,  coming  up 
into  view  for  all  the  world  like  two  tiny  headlights 
of  a  motor-car.  They  passed,  and  the  broadside 
view  of  this  great  elater  was  still  absurdly  like  the 
profile  of  a  miniature  tonneau  with  the  top  down. 
I  laughingly  thought  to  myself  how  perfect  the  il 
lusion  would  be  if  a  red  tail-light  should  be  shown, 
when  to  my  amazement  a  rosy  red  light  flashed 
out  behind,  and  my  bewildered  eyes  all  but  dis 
tinguished  a  number!  Naught  but  a  tropical 
forest  could  present  such  contrasts  in  such  rapid 
succession  as  the  poor-me-one  and  this  parody  of 
man's  invention. 

I  captured  the  big  beetle  and  slid  him  into 
a  vial,  where  in  his  disgust  he  clicked  sharply 
against  the  glass.  The  vial  went  into  my  pocket 
and  we  picked  up  our  guns  and  crept  on.  As  we 
traversed  a  dark  patch,  dull  gleams  like  heat 
lightning  flashed  over  the  leaves,  and,  looking 
down,  I  saw  that  my  khaki  was  aglow  from  the 
illuminated  insect  within.  This  betrayed  every 
motion,  so  I  wrapped  the  vial  in  several  sheets  of 
paper  and  rolled  it  up  in  my  handkerchief.  The 
glow  was  duller  but  almost  as  penetrating.  At  one 

38 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

time  or  another  I  have  had  to  make  use  of  all  my 
garments,  from  topee  to  moccasins,  in  order  to  con 
fine  captives  armed  with  stings,  beaks,  teeth,  or 
fangs,  but  now  I  was  at  a  complete  loss.  I  tried  a 
gun-barrel  with  a  handkerchief  stopper,  and  found 
that  I  now  carried  an  excellent,  long-handled  flash 
light.  Besides,  I  might  have  sudden  use  for  the 
normal  function  of  the  gun.  I  had  nothing  suffi 
ciently  opaque  to  quench  those  flaring  headlights, 
and  I  had  to  own  myself  beaten  and  release  him. 
He  spread  his  wings  and  flew  swiftly  away,  his 
red  light  glowing  derisively ;  and  even  in  the  flood 
of  pure  moonlight  he  moved  within  an  aura 
which  carried  far  through  the  jungle.  I  knew 
that  killing  him  was  of  no  use,  for  a  week  after 
death  from  chloroform  I  have  seen  the  entire  in 
terior  of  a  large  insect  box  brilliantly  lighted  by 
the  glow  of  these  wonderful  candles,  still  burning 
on  the  dead  shoulders  of  the  same  kind  of  insect. 
Twice,  deeper  in  the  jungle,  we  squatted  and 
listened,  and  twice  the  silence  remained  unbroken 
and  the  air  unmoved.  Happening  to  look  up 
through  a  lofty,  narrow  canyon  of  dark  foliage,  I 
was  startled  as  by  some  sudden  sound  by  seeing 
a  pure  white  cloud,  moon-lit,  low  down,  pass  rap 
idly  across.  It  was  first  astounding,  then  unreal : 
a  bit  of  exceedingly  poor  work  on  the  part  of  the 
property  man,  who  had  mixed  the  hurricane  scen 
ery  with  that  of  the  dog-days.  Even  the  elements 
seemed  to  have  been  laved  with  magic.  The  zone 
of  high  wind,  with  its  swift-flying  clouds,  must 

39 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

have  been  flowing  like  a  river  just  above  the  mo 
tionless  foliage  of  the  tree-tops. 

This  piece  of  ultra-unnaturalism  seemed  to 
break  part  of  the  spell  and  the  magic  silence  was 
lifted.  Two  frogs  boomed  again,  close  at  hand, 
and  now  all  the  hound  similitude  was  gone,  and 
in  its  place  another,  still  more  strange,  when  we 
think  of  the  goggle-eyed  author  far  up  in  the  trees. 
The  sound  now  was  identical  with  the  short 
cough  or  growl  of  a  hungry  lion,  and  though  I 
have  heard  the  frogs  many  times  since  that  night, 
this  resemblance  never  changed  or  weakened.  It 
seemed  as  if  the  volume,  the  roaring  outburst, 
could  come  only  from  the  throat  of  some  large, 
full-lunged  mammal. 

A  sudden  tearing  rush  from  the  trail-side,  and 
ripping  of  vines  and  shrubs,  was  mingled  with 
deep,  hoarse  snorts,  and  we  knew  that  we  had 
disturbed  one  of  the  big  red  deer  —  big  only  in 
comparison  with  the  common  tiny  brown  brock 
ets.  A  few  yards  farther  the  leaves  rustled  high 
overhead,  although  no  breath  of  wind  had  as  yet 
touched  the  jungle.  I  began  a  slow,  careful 
search  with  my  flashlight,  and,  mingled  with  the 
splotches  and  specks  of  moonlight  high  overhead, 
I  seemed  to  see  scores  of  little  eyes  peering  down. 
But  at  last  my  faint  electric  beam  found  its  mark 
and  evolved  the  first  bit  of  real  color  which  the 
jungle  had  shown  —  always  excepting  the  ruby 
tail-light.  Two  tiny  red  globes  gleamed  down  at 
us,  and  as  they  gleamed,  moved  without  a  sound, 

40 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

apparently  unattached,  slowly  through  the  foli 
age.  Then  came  a  voice,  as  wandering,  as  im 
personal  as  the  eyes  —  a  sharp,  incisive  wheeeeeat! 
with  a  cat-like  timbre;  and  from  the  eyes  and 
voice  I  reconstructed  a  night  monkey  —  a  kin- 
kajou. 

Then  another  notch  was  slipped  and  the  jungle 
for  a  time  showed  something  of  the  exuberance 
of  its  life.  A  paca  leaped  from  its  meal  of  nuts 
and  bounced  away  with  quick,  repeated  pats;  a 
beetle  with  wings  tuned  to  the  bass  clef  droned 
by;  some  giant  tree-cricket  tore  the  remaining 
intervals  of  silence  to  shreds  with  unmuted  wing- 
fiddles,  cricks  so  shrill  and  high  that  they  well- 
nigh  passed  beyond  the  upper  register  of  my  ear 
out  into  silence  again.  The  roar  of  another  frog 
was  comforting  to  my  ear-drum. 

Then  silence  descended  again,  and  hours  passed 
in  our  search  for  sound  or  smell  of  the  animal  we 
wished  chiefest  to  find  —  the  giant  armadillo. 
These  rare  beings  have  a  distinct  odor.  Months 
of  work  in  the  open  had  sharpened  my  nostrils  so 
that  on  such  a  tramp  as  this  they  were  not  much 
inferior  to  those  of  Nupee.  This  sense  gave  me 
as  keen  pleasure  as  eye  or  ear,  and  furnished  quite 
as  much  information.  The  odors  of  city  and  civi 
lization  seemed  very  far  away:  gasolene,  paint, 
smoke,  perfumery,  leather  —  all  these  could  hard 
ly  be  recalled.  And  how  absurd  seemed  society's 
unwritten  taboo  on  discussion  of  this  admirable 
but  pitifully  degenerate  sense!  Why  may  you 

41 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

look  at  your  friend's  books,  touch  his  collection 
of  netsukes,  listen  to  his  music,  yet  dare  sniff  at 
naught  but  his  blossoms! 

In  the  open  spaces  of  the  earth,  and  more  than 
anywhere  in  this  conservatory  of  unblown  odors, 
we  come  more  and  more  to  appreciate  and  envy 
a  dog's  sensitive  muzzle.  Here  we  sniffed  as  nat 
urally  as  we  turned  ear,  and  were  able  to  recog 
nize  many  of  our  nasal  impressions,  and  even  to 
follow  a  particularly  strong  scent  to  its  source. 
Few  yards  of  trail  but  had  their  distinguishable 
scent,  whether  violent,  acrid  smell  or  delectable 
fragrance.  Long  after  a  crab- jackal  had  passed, 
we  noted  the  stinging,  bitter  taint  in  the  air;  and 
now  and  then  the  pungent  wake  of  some  big  jun 
gle-bug  struck  us  like  a  tangible  barrier. 

The  most  tantalizing  odors  were  the  wonder 
fully  delicate  and  penetrating  ones  from  some 
great  burst  of  blossoms,  odors  heavy  with  sweet 
ness,  which  seeped  down  from  vine  or  tree  high 
overhead,  wholly  invisible  from  below  even  in 
broad  daylight.  These  odors  remained  longest 
in  memory,  perhaps  because  they  were  so  com 
pletely  the  product  of  a  single  sense.  There  were 
others  too,  which  were  unforgettable,  because, 
like  the  voice  of  the  frog,  they  stirred  the  mem 
ory  a  fraction  before  they  excited  curiosity.  Such 
I  found  the  powerful  musk  from  the  bed  of  leaves 
which  a  fawn  had  just  left.  For  some  reason  this 
brought  vividly  to  mind  the  fearful  compound 
of  smells  arising  from  the  decks  of  Chinese  junks. 

42 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 


in 

Along  the  moonlit  trail  there  came  wavering 
whiffs  of  orchids,  ranging  from  attar  of  roses  and 
carnations  to  the  pungence  of  carrion,  the  latter 
doubtless  distilled  from  as  delicate  and  as  beauti 
ful  blossoms  as  the  former.  There  were,  besides, 
the  myriad  and  bewildering  smells  of  sap,  crushed 
leaves,  and  decaying  wood ;  acrid,  sweet,  spicy, 
and  suffocating,  some  like  musty  books,  others 
recalling  the  paint  on  the  Noah's  Ark  of  one's 
nursery. 

But  the  scent  of  the  giant  armadillo  eluded  us. 
When  we  waded  through  some  new,  strange  odor 
I  looked  back  at  Nupee,  hoping  for  some  sign 
that  it  was  the  one  we  sought.  But  that  night 
the  great  armored  creatures  went  their  way  and 
we  ours,  and  the  two  did  not  cross.  Nupee 
showed  me  a  track  at  the  trail-side  made  long  ago, 
as  wide  and  deep  as  the  spoor  of  a  dinosaur,  and  I 
fingered  it  reverently  as  I  would  have  touched 
the  imprint  of  a  recently  alighted  pterodactyl, 
taking  care  not  to  spoil  the  outlines  of  the  huge 
claw-marks.  All  my  search  for  him  had  been  in 
vain  thus  far,  though  I  had  been  so  close  upon  his 
trail  as  to  have  seen  fresh  blood.  I  had  made  up 
my  mind  not  to  give  up,  but  it  seemed  as  if  suc 
cess  must  wait  for  another  year. 

We  watched  and  called  the  ghostly  kinkajous 
and  held  them  fascinated  with  our  stream  of  light ; 
we  aroused  unnamable  creatures  which  squawked 

43 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

companionably  at  us  and  rustled  the  tree-top 
leaves;  we  listened  to  the  whispered  rush  of  pass 
ing  vampires  skimming  our  faces  and  were  sooth 
ed  by  the  hypnotic  droning  hum  which  beetles 
left  in  their  swift  wake.  Finally  we  turned  and 
circled  through  side  trails  so  narrow  and  so  dark 
that  we  walked  with  outstretched  arms,  feeling 
for  the  trunks  and  lianas,  choosing  a  sloth's  gait 
and  the  hope  of  new  adventures  rather  than  the 
glare  of  my  flash  on  our  path. 

When  we  entered  Kalacoon  trail,  we  headed 
toward  home.  Within  sight  of  the  first  turn  a 
great  black  branch  of  a  tree  had  recently  fallen 
across  the  trail  in  a  patch  of  moonlight.  Before 
we  reached  it,  the  branch  had  done  something  it 
should  not  have  done  —  it  had  straightened 
slightly.  We  strained  our  eyes  to  the  utmost  but 
could  not,  in  this  eerie  light,  tell  head  from  tail 
end  of  this  great  serpent.  It  moved  very  slowly, 
and  with  a  motion  which  perfectly  confounded 
our  perception.  Its  progress  seemed  no  faster 
than  the  hour  hand  of  a  watch,  but  we  knew  that 
it  moved,  yet  so  close  to  the  white  sand  that  the 
whole  trail  seemed  to  move  with  it.  The  eye  re 
fused  to  admit  any  motion  except  in  sudden  shifts, 
like  widely  separated  films  of  a  motion-picture. 
For  minute  after  minute  it  seemed  quiescent; 
then  we  would  blink  and  realize  that  it  was  too 
feet  higher  up  the  bank.  One  thing  we  could  see 
—  a  great  thickening  near  the  centre  of  the  snake : 
it  had  fed  recently  and  to  repletion,  and  slowly 

44 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

it  was  making  its  way  to  some  hidden  lair,  per 
haps  to  lie  motionless  until  another  moon  should 
silver  the  jungle.  Was  there  any  stranger  life  in 
the  world? 

Whether  it  was  a  giant  bushmaster  or  a  con 
strictor,  we  could  not  tell  in  the  diffused  light. 
I  allowed  it  to  go  unharmed,  for  the  spell  of  si 
lence  and  the  jungle  night  was  too  strongly  woven 
to  be  shattered  again  by  the  crash  of  gun  or  rifle. 
Nupee  had  been  quite  willing  to  remain  behind, 
and  now,  as  so  often  with  my  savage  friends,  he 
looked  at  me  wonderingly.  He  did  not  under 
stand  and  I  could  not  explain.  We  were  at  one  in 
the  enjoyment  of  direct  phenomena;  we  could 
have  passed  months  of  intimate  companionship 
in  the  wilds  as  I  had  done  with  his  predecessors; 
but  at  the  touch  of  abstract  things,  of  letting  a 
deadly  creature  live  for  any  reason  except  for 
lack  of  a  gun  —  then  they  looked  at  me  always 
with  that  puzzled  look,  that  straining  to  grasp 
the  something  which  they  knew  must  be  there. 
And  at  once  always  followed  instant  acceptance, 
unquestioning,  without  protest.  The  transition 
was  smooth,  direct,  complete :  the  sahib  had  had 
opportunity  to  shoot;  he  had  not  done  so;  what 
did  the  sahib  wish  to  do  now  —  to  squat  longer 
or  to  go  on? 

We  waited  for  many  minutes  at  the  edge  of  a 
small  glade,  and  the  event  which  seemed  most 
significant  to  me  was  in  actual  spectacle  one  of  the 
last  of  the  night's  happenings.  I  sat  with  chin  on 

45 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

knees,  coolie-fashion  —  a  position  which,  when 
once  mastered,  and  with  muscles  trained  to  with 
stand  the  unusual  flexion  for  hour  after  hour,  is 
one  of  the  most  valuable  assets  of  the  wilderness 
lover  and  the  watcher  of  wild  things.  It  enables 
one  to  spend  long  periods  of  time  in  the  lowest  of 
umbrella  tents,  or  to  rest  on  wet  ground  or  sharp 
stones  where  actual  sitting  dowrn  would  be  impos 
sible.  Thus  is  one  insulated  from  betes  rouges  and 
enthusiastic  ants  whose  sole  motto  is  eternal  pre 
paredness.  Thus  too  one  slips,  as  it  were,  under 
the  visual  guard  of  human-shy  creatures,  whose 
eyes  are  on  the  lookout  for  their  enemy  at  human 
height.  From  such  a  position,  a  single  upward 
leap  prepares  one  instantly  for  advance  or  retreat, 
either  of  which  manoeuvres  is  well  within  instant 
necessity  at  times.  Then  there  were  always  the 
two  positions  to  which  one  could  change  if  occa 
sion  required  —  flat-footed,  with  arm-pits  on 
knees,  or  on  the  balls  of  the  feet  with  elbows  on 
knees.  Thus  is  every  muscle  shifted  and  relaxed. 
Squatting  is  one  of  the  many  things  which  a 
white  man  may  learn  from  watching  his  shikarees 
and  guides,  and  which,  in  the  wilderness,  he  may 
adopt  without  losing  caste.  We  are  a  chair-rid 
den  people,  and  dare  hardly  even  cross  our  knees 
in  public.  Yet  how  many  of  us  delight  in  sitting 
Buddha-fashion,  or  as  near  to  it  as  we  can  at 
tain,  when  the  ban  of  society  is  lifted !  A  chair- 
less  people,  however,  does  not  necessarily  mean  a 
more  simple,  primitive  type.  The  Japanese  meth- 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

od  of  sitting  is  infinitely  more  difficult  and  com 
plex  than  ours.  The  characters  of  our  weak- 
thighed,  neolithic  forbears  are  as  yet  too  pro 
nounced  in  our  own  bodies  for  us  to  keep  an  up 
right  position  for  long.  Witness  the  admirable 
admittance  of  this  anthropological  fact  by  the 
architects  of  our  subway  cars,  who  know  that 
only  a  tithe  of  their  patrons  will  be  fortunate 
enough  to  find  room  on  the  cane-barked  seats 
which  have  come  to  take  the  place  of  the  stumps 
and  fallen  logs  of  a  hundred  thousand  years  ago. 
So  they  have  thoughtfully  strung  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  cars  with  imitation  branches  and 
swaying  lianas,  to  which  the  last-comers  cling 
jealously,  and  swing  with  more  or  less  of  the 
grace  of  their  distant  forbears.  Their  fur,  to  be 
sure,  is  rubbed  thinner;  nuts  and  fruits  have  giv 
en  place  to  newspapers  and  novels,  and  the  roar 
and  odors  are  not  those  of  the  wind  among  the 
leaves  and  blossoms.  But  the  simile  is  amusing 
enough  to  end  abruptly,  and  permit  individual 
imagination  to  complete  it. 

When  I  see  an  overtired  waiter  or  clerk  swaying 
from  foot  to  foot  like  a  rocking  elephant,  I  some 
times  place  the  blame  further  back  than  immedi 
ate  impatience  for  the  striking  of  the  closing  hour. 
It  were  more  true  to  blame  the  gentlemen  whose 
habits  were  formed  before  caste,  whose  activities 
preceded  speech. 

We  may  be  certain  that  chairs  will  never  go  out 
of  fashion.  We  are  at  the  end  of  bodily  evolution 

47 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

in  that  direction.  But  to  see  a  white-draped, 
lanky  Hindu,  or  a  red-cloaked  lama  of  the  hills, 
quietly  fold  up,  no  matter  where  he  may  be,  is  to 
witness  the  perfection  of  chairless  rest.  One  can 
read  or  write  or  doze  comfortably,  swaying 
slightly  with  a  bird's  unconscious  balance,  or,  as 
in  my  case  at  present,  wholly  disarm  suspicion 
on  the  part  of  the  wild  creatures  by  sinking  from 
the  height  of  a  man  to  that  of  a  jungle  deer.  And 
still  I  had  lost  nothing  of  the  insulation  which  my 
moccasins  provided  from  all  the  inconveniences 
of  the  forest  floor.  Looking  at  Nupee  after  this 
rush  of  chaotic  thoughts  which  came  between 
jungle  happenings,  I  chuckled  as  I  hugged  my 
knees,  for  I  knew  that  Nupee  had  noticed  and  si 
lently  considered  my  little  accomplishment,  and 
that  he  approved,  and  I  knew  that  I  had  acquired 
merit  in  his  sight.  Thus  may  we  revel  in  the  ap 
proval  of  our  super-servants,  but  they  must  never 
know  it. 

From  this  eulogy  of  squatting,  my  mind  re 
turned  to  the  white  light  of  the  glade.  I  watched 
the  motionless  leaves  about  me,  many  of  them 
drooping  and  rich  maroon  by  daylight,  for  they 
were  just  unbudded.  Reaching  far  into  the  dark 
mystery  of  the  upper  jungle  stretched  the  air- 
roots,  held  so  straight  by  gravity,  so  unheeding  of 
the  whirling  of  the  planet  through  space.  Only 
one  mighty  liana  —  a  monkey-ladder  —  had  re 
volted  against  this  dominance  of  the  earth's  pull 
and  writhed  and  looped  upon  itself  in  fantastic 

48 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

whorls,  while  along  its  length  rippled  ever  the  un 
dulations  which  mark  this  uneasy  growth,  this 
crystallized  Saint  Vitus  plant. 

A  momentary  shiver  of  leaves  drew  our  eyes  to 
the  left,  and  we  began  to  destroy  the  optical  im 
ages  evolved  by  the  moon-shadows  and  to  seek  the 
small  reality  which  we  knew  lived  and  breathed 
somewhere  on  that  long  branch.  Then  a  sharp 
crack  like  a  rifle  lost  whatever  it  was  to  us  forever, 
and  we  half  leaped  to  our  feet  as  something  swept 
downward  through  the  air  and  crashed  length 
after  length  among  the  plants  and  fallen  logs. 
The  branches  overhead  rocked  to  and  fro,  and  for 
many  minutes,  like  the  aftermath  of  a  volcanic 
eruption,  came  a  shower,  first  of  twigs  and  swirl 
ing  leaves,  then  of  finer  particles,  and  lastly  of 
motes  which  gleamed  like  silver  dust  as  they  sift 
ed  down  to  the  trail.  When  the  air  cleared  I  saw 
that  the  monkey-ladder  had  vanished  and  I  knew 
that  its  yards  upon  yards  of  length  lay  coiled  and 
crushed  among  the  ferns  and  sprouting  palms  of 
the  jungle  floor.  It  seemed  most  fitting  that  the 
vegetable  kingdom,  whose  silence  and  majesty 
gave  to  the  jungle  night  its  magic  qualities,  should 
have  contributed  this  memorable  climax. 

Long  before  the  first  Spaniard  sailed  up  the 
neighboring  river,  the  monkey-ladder  had  thrown 
its  spirals  aloft,  and  through  all  the  centuries,  all 
the  years,  it  had  seen  no  change  wrought  beneath 
it.  The  animal  trail  was  trod  now  and  then  by 
Indian  hunters,  and  lately  we  had  passed  several 

49 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

times.  The  sound  of  our  guns  was  less  than  the 
crashing  fall  of  an  occasional  forest  tree.  Now, 
with  not  a  leaf  moved  by  the  air,  with  only  the 
two  of  us  squatting  in  the  moonlight  for  audience, 
the  last  cell  had  given  way.  The  sap  could  no 
longer  fight  the  decay  which  had  entered  its 
heart;  and  at  the  appointed  moment,  the  moment 
set  by  the  culmination  of  a  greater  nexus  of 
forces  than  our  human  mind  could  ever  hope  to 
grasp,  the  last  fibre  parted  and  the  massive  growth 
fell. 

In  the  last  few  minutes,  as  it  hung  suspended, 
gracefully spiraled  in  the  moonlight,  it  had  seemed 
as  perfect  as  the  new-sprouted  moras  at  my  feet. 
As  I  slowly  walked  out  of  the  jungle  I  saw  in  this 
the  explanation  of  the  simile  of  artificial  scenery, 
of  all  the  strange  magic  which  had  come  to  me  as 
I  entered.  The  alchemy  of  moonlight  turned  all 
the  jungle  to  perfect  growth,  growth  at  rest.  In 
the  silvery  light  was  no  trace  of  gnawing  worm, 
of  ravening  ant,  or  corroding  fungus.  The  jungle 
was  rejuvenated  and  made  a  place  more  wonder 
ful  than  any  fairyland  of  which  I  have  read  or 
which  I  have  conceived.  The  jungle  by  day,  as  I 
have  said  —  that,  too,  is  wonderful.  We  may 
have  two  friends,  quite  unlike  in  character,  whom 
we  love  each  for  his  own  personality,  and  yet  it 
would  be  a  hideous,  an  unthinkable  thing  to  see 
one  transformed  into  the  other. 

So,  with  the  mist  settling  down  and  tarnishing 
the  great  plaque  of  silver,  I  left  the  jungle,  glad 

50 


JUNGLE  NIGHT 

that  I  could  be  far  away  before  the  first  hint  of 
dawn  came  to  mar  the  magic.  Thus  in  memory 
I  can  keep  the  dawn  away  until  I  return. 

And  sometime  in  the  future,  when  the  lure  of 
the  full  moon  comes,  and  I  answer,  I  shall  be  cer 
tain  of  finding  the  same  silence,  the  same  wonder 
ful  light,  and  the  waiting  trees  and  the  magic. 
But  Nupee  may  not  be  there.  He  will  perhaps 
have  slipped  into  memory,  with  Drojak  and  Alad 
din.  And  if  I  find  no  one  as  silently  friendly  as 
Nupee,  I  shall  have  to  watch  alone  through  my 
jungle  night. 


The  Devil  Baby  at  Hull- House 

By  Jane  Addams 


THE  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  the  Devil 
Baby  burst  upon  the  residents  of  Hull-House 
one  day  when  three  Italian  women,  with  an  ex 
cited  rush  through  the  door,  demanded  that  he 
be  shown  them.  No  amount  of  denial  convinced 
them  that  he  was  not  there,  for  they  knew  exactly 
what  he  was  like,  with  his  cloven  hoofs,  his  point 
ed  ears  and  diminutive  tail ;  moreover,  the  Devil 
Baby  had  been  able  to  speak  as  soon  as  he  was 
born  and  was  most  shockingly  profane. 

The  three  women  were  but  the  forerunners  of  a 
veritable  multitude ;  for  six  weeks  the  streams  of 
visitors  from  every  part  of  the  city  and  suburbs 
to  this  mythical  baby  poured  in  all  day  long,  and 
so  far  into  the  night  that  the  regular  activities  of 
the  settlement  were  almost  swamped. 

The  Italian  version,  with  a  hundred  variations, 
dealt  with  a  pious  Italian  girl  married  to  an  athe 
ist.  Her  husband  vehemently  tore  a  holy  picture 
from  the  bedroom  wall,  saying  that  he  would 
quite  as  soon  have  a  devil  in  the  house  as  that; 

52 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

whereupon  the  devil  incarnated  himself  in  her 
coming  child.  As  soon  as  the  Devil  Baby  was 
born,  he  ran  about  the  table  shaking  his  finger  in 
deep  reproach  at  his  father,  who  finally  caught 
him  and  in  fear  and  trembling  brought  him  to 
Hull-House.  When  the  residents  there,  in  spite 
of  the  baby's  shocking  appearance,  wishing  to 
save  his  soul,  took  him  to  church  for  baptism, 
they  found  that  the  shawl  was  empty,  and  the 
Devil  Baby,  fleeing  from  the  holy  water,  ran  light 
ly  over  the  backs  of  the  pews. 

The  Jewish  version,  again  with  variations,  was 
to  the  effect  that  the  father  of  six  daughters  had 
said  before  the  birth  of  a  seventh  child  that  he 
would  rather  have  a  devil  in  the  house  than  an 
other  girl,  whereupon  the  Devil  Baby  promptly 
appeared. 

Save  for  a  red  automobile  which  occasionally 
figured  in  the  story,  and  a  stray  cigar  which,  in 
some  versions,  the  newborn  child  snatched  from 
his  father's  lips,  the  tale  might  have  been  fash 
ioned  a  thousand  years  ago. 

Although  the  visitors  to  the  Devil  Baby  in 
cluded  people  of  every  degree  of  prosperity  and 
education,  —  even  physicians  and  trained  nurses 
who  assured  us  of  their  scientific  interest,  —  the 
story  constantly  demonstrated  the  power  of  an 
old  wives'  tale  among  thousands  of  people  in 
modern  society  who  are  living  in  a  corner  of  their 
own,  their  vision  fixed,  their  intelligence  held  by 
some  iron  chain  of  silent  habit.  To  such  primi- 

53 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

tive  people  the  metaphor  apparently  is  still  the 
very  'stuff  of  life';  or,  rather,  no  other  form  of 
statement  reaches  them,  and  the  tremendous  ton 
nage  of  current  writing  for  them  has  no  existence. 
It  was  in  keeping  with  their  simple  habits  that 
the  reputed  presence  of  the  Devil  Baby  at  Hull- 
House  did  not  reach  the  newspapers  until  the 
fifth  week  of  his  sojourn  —  after  thousands  of 
people  had  already  been  informed  of  his  where 
abouts  by  the  old  method  of  passing  news  from 
mouth  to  mouth. 

During  the  weeks  of  excitement  it  was  the  old 
women  who  really  seemed  to  have  come  into  their 
own,  and  perhaps  the  most  significant  result  of  the 
incident  was  the  reaction  of  the  story  upon  them. 
It  stirred  their  minds  and  memories  as  with  a 
magic  touch;  it  loosened  their  tongues  and  re 
vealed  the  inner  life  and  thoughts  of  those  who 
are  so  often  inarticulate.  These  old  women  en 
joyed  a  moment  of  triumph,  as  if  they  had  made 
good  at  last  and  had  come  into  a  region  of  sanc 
tions  and  punishments  which  they  understood. 

Throughout  six  weeks,  as  I  went  about  Hull- 
House,  I  would  hear  a  voice  at  the  telephone  re 
peating  for  the  hundredth  time  that  day,  'No, 
there  is  no  such  baby ' ; '  No,  we  never  had  it  here ' ; 
'No,  he  could  n't  have  seen  it  for  fifty  cents'; 
'We  did  n't  send  it  anywhere  because  we  never 
had  it ' ;  'I  don't  mean  to  say  that  your  sister-in- 
law  lied,  but  there  must  be  some  mistake ' ; '  There 
is  no  use  getting  up  an  excursion  from  Milwaukee, 

54 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

for  there  is  n't  any  Devil  Baby  at  Hull-House'; 
'  We  can't  give  reduced  rates  because  we  are  not 
exhibiting  anything';  and  so  on  and  on.  As  I 
came  near  the  front  door,  I  would  catch  snatches 
of  arguments  that  were  often  acrimonious : '  Why 
do  you  let  so  many  people  believe  it,  if  it  is  n't 
here? '  'We  have  taken  three  lines  of  cars  to  come, 
and  we  have  as  much  right  to  see  it  as  anybody 
else';  'This  is  a  pretty  big  place,  of  course  you 
could  hide  it  easy  enough ' ; '  What  you  saying  that 
for  —  are  you  going  to  raise  the  price  of  admis 
sion?'  We  had  doubtless  struck  a  case  of  what 
the  psychologists  call  the  '  contagion  of  emotion, ' 
added  to  that  '  aesthetic  sociability '  which  impels 
any  one  of  us  to  drag  the  entire  household  to  the 
window  when  a  procession  comes  into  the  street 
or  a  rainbow  appears  in  the  sky. 

But  the  Devil  Baby  of  course  was  worth  many 
processions  and  rainbows,  and  I  will  confess  that, 
as  the  empty  show  went  on  day  after  day,  I  quite 
revolted  against  such  a  vapid  manifestation  of  an 
admirable  human  trait.  There  was  always  one 
exception,  however:  whenever  I  heard  the  high 
eager  voices  of  old  women,  I  was  irresistibly 
interested,  and  left  anything  I  might  be  doing  in 
order  to  listen  to  them. 

II 

Perhaps  my  many  talks  with  these  aged  visi 
tors  crystallized  thoughts  and  impressions  that 
I  had  been  receiving  through  years;  or  the  tale 

55 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

itself  may  have  ignited  a  fire,  as  it  were,  whose 
light  illumined  some  of  my  darkest  memories  of 
neglected  and  uncomfortable  old  age,  of  old 
peasant  women  who  had  ruthlessly  probed  into 
the  ugly  depths  of  human  nature  in  themselves 
and  others.  Many  of  them  who  came  to  see  the 
Devil  Baby  had  been  forced  to  face  tragic  human 
experiences;  the  powers  of  brutality  and  horror 
had  had  full  scope  in  their  lives,  and  for  years 
they  had  had  acquaintance  with  disaster  and 
death.  Such  old  women  do  not  shirk  life's  misery 
by  feeble  idealism,  for  they  are  long  past  the  stage 
of  make-believe.  They  relate  without  flinching 
the  most  hideous  experiences.  '  My  face  has  had 
this  queer  twist  for  now  nearly  sixty  years ;  I  was 
ten  when  it  got  that  way,  the  night  after  I  saw 
my  father  do  my  mother  to  death  with  his  knife. ' 
'Yes,  I  had  fourteen  children;  only  two  grew  to 
be  men  and  both  of  them  were  killed  in  the  same 
explosion.  I  was  never  sure  they  brought  home 
the  right  bodies.*  But  even  the  most  hideous 
sorrows  which  the  old  women  related  had  appar 
ently  subsided  into  the  paler  emotion  of  inef 
fectual  regret,  after  Memory  had  long  done  her 
work  upon  them;  the  old  people  seemed,  in  some 
unaccountable  way,  to  lose  all  bitterness  and  re 
sentment  against  life,  or  rather  they  were  so  com 
pletely  without  it  that  they  must  have  lost  it  long 
since. 

Perhaps  those  women,  because  they  had  come 
to  expect  nothing  more  from  life  and  had  per- 

56 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

force  ceased  from  grasping  and  striving,  had  ob 
tained,  if  not  renunciation,  at  least  that  quiet 
endurance  which  allows  the  wounds  of  the  spirit 
to  heal.  Through  their  stored-up  habit  of  acqui 
escence,  they  vouchsafed  a  fleeting  glimpse  of 
that  translucent  wisdom  so  often  embodied  in  old 
women,  but  so  difficult  to  portray.  I  recall  a  con 
versation  with  one  of  them,  a  woman  whose  fine 
mind  and  indomitable  spirit  I  had  long  admired ; 
I  had  known  her  for  years,  and  yet  the  recital 
of  her  sufferings,  added  to  those  which  the  Devil 
Baby  had  already  induced  other  women  to  tell 
me,  pierced  me  afresh. 

1 1  had  eleven  children,  some  born  in  Bohemia 
and  some  born  here ;  nine  of  them  boys ;  all  of  the 
children  died  when  they  were  little,  but  my  dear 
Liboucha,  you  know  all  about  her.  She  died  last 
winter  in  the  insane  asylum.  She  was  only  twelve 
years  old  when  her  father,  in  a  fit  of  delirium  tre- 
mens,  killed  himself  after  he  had  chased  us  around 
the  room  trying  to  kill  us  first.  She  saw  it  all; 
the  blood  splashed  on  the  wall  stayed  in  her  mind 
the  worst;  she  shivered  and  shook  all  that  night 
through,  and  the  next  morning  she  had  lost  her 
voice,  could  n't  speak  out  loud  for  terror.  After 
a  while  her  voice  came  back,  although  it  was  nev 
er  very  natural,  and  she  went  to  school  again. 
She  seemed  to  do  as  well  as  ever  and  was  awful 
pleased  when  she  got  into  High  School.  All  the 
money  we  had,  I  earned  scrubbing  in  a  public  dis 
pensary,  although  sometimes  I  got  a  little  more 

57 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

by  interpreting  for  the  patients,  for  I  know  three 
languages,  one  as  well  as  the  other.  But  I  was 
determined  that,  whatever  happened  to  me,  Lib- 
oucha  was  to  be  educated.  My  husband's  father 
was  a  doctor  in  the  old  country,  and  Liboucha 
was  always  a  clever  child.  I  would  n't  have  her 
live  the  kind  of  life  I  had,  with  no  use  for  my 
mind  except  to  make  me  restless  and  bitter.  I 
was  pretty  old  and  worn  out  for  such  hard  work, 
but  when  I  used  to  see  Liboucha  on  a  Sunday 
morning,  ready  for  church,  in  her  white  dress  with 
her  long  yellow  hair  braided  round  her  beauti 
ful  pale  face,  lying  there  in  bed  as  I  was,  —  being 
brought  up  a  freethinker  and  needing  to  rest  my 
aching  bones  for  the  next  week's  work,  —  I'd  feel 
almost  happy,  in  spite  of  everything. 

1  But  of  course  no  such  peace  could  last  in  my 
life;  the  second  year  at  High  School,  Liboucha 
began  to  seem  different  and  do  strange  things. 
You  know  the  time  she  wandered  away  for  three 
days  and  we  were  all  wild  with  fright,  although  a 
kind  woman  had  taken  her  in  and  no  harm  came 
to  her.  I  could  never  be  easy  after  that ;  she  was 
always  gentle,  but  she  was  awful  sly  about  run 
ning  away,  and  at  last  I  had  to  send  her  to  the 
asylum.  She  stayed  there  off  and  on  for  five 
years,  but  I  saw  her  every  week  of  my  life  and 
she  was  always  company  for  me,  what  with  sew 
ing  for  her,  washing  and  ironing  her  clothes,  cook 
ing  little  things  to  take  out  to  her  and  saving  a  bit 
of  money  to  buy  fruit  for  her.  At  any  rate,  I  had 

'  58 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

stopped  feeling  so  bitter,  and  got  some  comfort 
out  of  seeing  the  one  thing  that  belonged  to  me  on 
this  side  of  the  water,  when  all  of  a  sudden  she 
died  of  heart-failure,  and  they  never  took  the 
trouble  to  send  for  me  until  the  next  day.' 

She  stopped,  as  if  wondering  afresh  that  the 
Fates  could  have  been  so  casual,  but  with  a  sud 
den  illumination,  as  if  she  had  been  awakened  out 
of  the  burden  and  intensity  of  her  restricted  per 
sonal  interests  into  a  consciousness  of  those  larger 
relations  which  are,  for  the  most  part,  so  strangely 
invisible.  It  was  as  if  the  young  mother  of  the 
grotesque  Devil  Baby,  that  victim  of  wrongdoing 
on  the  part  of  others,  had  revealed  to  this  tragic 
woman,  much  more  clearly  than  soft  words  had 
ever  done,  that  the  return  of  a  deed  of  violence 
upon  the  head  of  the  innocent  is  inevitable ;  as  if 
she  had  realized  that,  although  she  was  destined 
to  walk  all  the  days  of  her  life  with  that  piteous 
multitude  who  bear  the  undeserved  wrongs  of  the 
world,  she  would  walk  henceforth  with  a  sense  of 
companionship. 

Among  the  visitors  were  pitiful  old  women  who, 
although  they  had  already  reconciled  themselves 
to  much  misery,  were  still  enduring  more.  '  You 
might  say  it's  a  disgrace  to  have  your  son  beat 
you  up  for  the  sake  of  a  bit  of  money  you've 
earned  by  scrubbing,  —  your  own  man  is  differ 
ent,  —  but  I  have  n't  the  heart  to  blame  the  boy 
for  doing  what  he's  seen  all  his  life;  his  father  for 
ever  went  wild  when  the  drink  was  in  him  and 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

struck  me  to  the  very  day  of  his  death.  The  ugli 
ness  was  born  in  the  boy  as  the  marks  of  the  devil 
was  born  in  the  poor  child  upstairs. ' 

This  more  primitive  type  embodies  the  eternal 
patience  of  those  humble  toiling  women  who 
through  the  generations  have  been  held  of  little 
value,  save  as  their  drudgery  ministered  to  their 
men.  One  of  them  related  her  habit  of  going 
through  the  pockets  of  her  drunken  son  every  pay 
day,  and  complained  that  she  had  never  got  so 
little  as  the  night  before,  only  twenty-five  cents 
out  of  fifteen  dollars  he  had  promised  for  the  rent 
long  overdue.  '  I  had  to  get  that  as  he  lay  in  the 
alley  before  the  door;  I  couldn't  pull  him  in,  and 
the  copper  who  helped  him  home  left  as  soon  as 
he  heard  me  coming  and  pretended  he  did  n't  see 
me.  I  have  no  food  in  the  house  nor  coffee  to  sob 
er  him  up  with.  I  know  perfectly  well  that  you 
will  ask  me  to  eat  something  here,  but  if  I  can't 
carry  it  home,  I  won't  take  a  bite  nor  a  sup.  I 
have  never  told  you  so  much  before.  Since  one  of 
the  nurses  said  he  could  be  arrested  for  my  non- 
support,  I've  been  awfully  close-mouthed.  It's 
the  foolish  way  all  the  women  in  our  street  are 
talking  about  the  Devil  Baby  that's  loosened  my 
tongue  —  more  shame  to  me. ' 

There  are  those,  if  possible  more  piteous  still, 
who  have  become  absolutely  helpless  and  can 
therefore  no  longer  perform  the  household  serv 
ices  exacted  from  them.  One  last  wish  has  been 
denied  them.  '  I  hoped  to  go  before  I  became  a 

60 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

burden,  but  it  was  not  to  be';  and  the  long  days 
of  unwonted  idleness  are  darkened  by  the  haunt 
ing  fear  that '  they '  will  come  to  think  the  burden 
too  heavy  and  decide  that  the  poorhouse  is  'the 
best. '  Even  then  there  is  no  word  of  blame  for 
undutiful  children  or  heedless  grandchildren,  for 
apparently  all  that  is  petty  and  transitory  falls 
away  from  austere  old  age;  the  fires  are  burned  out, 
resentments,  hatreds,  and  even  cherished  sorrows 
have  become  actually  unintelligible.  It  is  as  if 
the  horrors  through  which  these  old  people  had 
passed  had  never  existed  for  them;  and,  facing 
death  as  they  are,  they  seem  anxious  to  speak 
only  such  words  of  groping  wisdom  as  they  can 
command. 

This  aspect  of  memory  has  never  been  more 
clearly  stated  than  by  Gilbert  Murray  in  his  Life 
of  Euripides.  He  tells  us  that  the  aged  poet,  when 
he  was  officially  declared  to  be  one  of  '  the  old  men 
of  Athens, '  said,  '  Even  yet  the  age-worn  minstrel 
can  turn  Memory  into  song' ;  and  the  memory  of 
which  he  spoke  was  that  of  history  and  tradition, 
rather  than  his  own.  The  aged  poet  turned  into 
song  even  the  hideous  story  of  Medea,  transmut 
ing  it  into  '  a  beautiful  remote  song  about  far-off 
children  who  have  been  slain  in  legend,  children 
who  are  now  at  peace  and  whose  ancient  pain  has 
become  part  mystery  and  part  music.  Memory 

—  that  Memory  who  is  the  mother  of  the  Muses 

—  having  done  her  work  upon  them. ' 

The  vivid  interest  of  so  many  old  women  in 

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the  story  of  the  Devil  Baby  may  have  been  an 
unconscious,  although  powerful,  testimony  that 
tragic  experiences  gradually  become  dressed  in 
such  trappings  in  order  that  their  spent  agony 
may  prove  of  some  use  to  a  world  which  learns 
at  the  hardest ;  and  that  the  strivings  and  suffer 
ings  of  men  and  women  long  since  dead,  their 
emotions  no  longer  connected  with  flesh  and 
blood,  are  thus  transmuted  into  legendary  wis 
dom.  The  young  are  forced  to  heed  the  warning 
in  such  a  tale,  although  for  the  most  part  it  is  so 
easy  for  them  to  disregard  the  words  of  the  aged. 
That  the  old  women  who  came  to  visit  the  Devil 
Baby  believed  that  the  story  would  secure  them 
a  hearing  at  home,  was  evident,  and  as  they 
prepared  themselves  with  every  detail  of  it,  their 
old  faces  shone  with  a  timid  satisfaction.  Their 
features,  worn  and  scarred  by  harsh  living,  even 
as  effigies  built  into  the  floor  of  an  old  church  be 
come  dim  and  defaced  by  rough-shod  feet,  grew 
poignant  and  solemn.  In  the  midst  of  their 
double  bewilderment,  both  that  the  younger  gen 
eration  were  walking  in  such  strange  paths  and 
that  no  one  would  listen  to  them,  for  one  moment 
there  flickered  up  that  last  hope  of  a  disappointed 
life,  that  it  may  at  least  serve  as  a  warning  while 
affording  material  for  exciting  narrations. 

Sometimes  in  talking  to  one  of  them,  who  was 
'  but  a  hair's  breadth  this  side  of  the  darkness, ' 
one  realized  that  old  age  has  its  own  expression  for 
the  mystic  renunciation  of  the  world.  The  im- 

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THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

patience  with  all  non-essentials,  the  craving  to  be 
free  from  hampering  bonds  and  soft  conditions, 
was  perhaps  typified  in  our  own  generation  by 
Tolstoi's  last  impetuous  journey,  the  light  of  his 
genius  for  a  moment  making  comprehensible 
to  us  that  unintelligible  impulse  of  the  aged. 

Often,  in  the  midst  of  a  conversation,  one  of 
these  touching  old  women  would  quietly  express 
a  longing  for  death,  as  if  it  were  a  natural  ful 
fillment  of  an  inmost  desire.  Her  sincerity  and 
anticipation  were  so  genuine  that  I  would  feel 
abashed  in  her  presence,  ashamed  to  '  cling  to  this 
strange  thing  that  shines  in  the  sunlight,  and  to 
be  sick  with  love  for  it. '  Such  impressions  were 
in  their  essence  transitory,  but  one  result  from  the 
hypothetical  visit  of  the  Devil  Baby  to  Hull- 
House  will,  I  think,  remain:  a  realization  of  the 
sifting  and  reconciling  power  inherent  in  Mem 
ory,  itself.  The  old  women,  with  much  to  ag 
gravate  and  little  to  soften  the  habitual  bodily 
discomforts  of  old  age,  exhibited  an  emotional 
serenity  so  vast  and  reassuring  that  I  found  my 
self  perpetually  speculating  as  to  how  soon  the 
fleeting  and  petty  emotions  which  seem  so  unduly 
important  to  us  now  might  be  thus  transmuted ; 
at  what  moment  we  might  expect  the  inconsis 
tencies  and  perplexities  of  life  to  be  brought  under 
this  appeasing  Memory,  with  its  ultimate  power 
to  increase  the  elements  of  Beauty  and  Signifi 
cance  and  to  reduce,  if  not  to  eliminate,  stupid 
ity  and  resentment. 

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in 

As  our  visitors  to  the  Devil  Baby  came  day  by 
day,  it  was  gradually  evident  that  the  simpler 
women  were  not  moved  wholly  by  curiosity,  but 
that  many  of  them  prized  the  story  as  a  valuable 
instrument  in  the  business  of  living. 

The  legend  exhibited  all  the  persistence  of  one 
of  those  tales  which  have  doubtless  been  pre 
served  through  the  centuries  because  of  their  tam 
ing  effects  upon  recalcitrant  husbands  and  fathers. 
Shamefaced  men  brought  by  their  women-folk 
to  see  the  baby  but  ill-concealed  their  triumph 
when  there  proved  to  be  no  such  visible  sign  of 
retribution  for  domestic  derelictions.  On  the 
other  hand,  numbers  of  men  came  by  themselves. 
One  group  from  a  neighboring  factory,  on  their 
'  own  time, '  offered  to  pay  twenty-five  cents,  a 
half-dollar,  two  dollars  apiece  to  see  the  child,  in 
sisting  that  it  must  be  at  Hull-House  because  'the 
women-folks  had  seen  it. '  To  my  query  as  to 
whether  they  supposed  we  would  exhibit  for 
money  a  poor  little  deformed  baby,  if  one  had 
been  born  in  the  neighborhood,  they  replied, 
'Sure,  why  not?'  and,  'It  teaches  a  good  lesson, 
too, '  they  added  as  an  afterthought,  or  perhaps 
as  a  concession  to  the  strange  moral  standards  of 
a  place  like  Hull-House.  All  the  members  of  this 
group  of  hardworking  men,  in  spite  of  a  certain 
swagger  toward  one  another  and  a  tendency  to 
bully  the  derelict  showman,  wore  that  hang-dog 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

look  betraying  the  sense  of  unfair  treatment 
which  a  man  is  so  apt  to  feel  when  his  womankind 
makes  an  appeal  to  the  supernatural.  In  their 
determination  to  see  the  child,  the  men  recklessly 
divulged  much  more  concerning  their  motives 
than  they  had  meant  to  do,  and  their  talk  con 
firmed  my  impression  that  such  a  story  may  still 
act  as  a  restraining  influence  in  that  sphere  of 
marital  conduct,  which,  next  to  primitive  religion 
itself,  we  are  told,  has  always  afforded  the  most 
fertile  field  for  irrational  tabus  and  savage  pun 
ishments. 

What  story  more  than  this  could  be  calculated 
to  secure  sympathy  for  the  mother  of  too  many 
daughters,  and  contumely  for  the  irritated  father? 
The  touch  of  mysticism,  the  supernatural  sphere 
in  which  it  was  placed,  would  render  a  man  per 
fectly  helpless. 

The  story  of  the  Devil  Baby,  evolved  to-day 
as  it  might  have  been  centuries  before  in  response 
to  the  imperative  needs  of  anxious  wives  and 
mothers,  recalled  the  theory  that  woman  first 
fashioned  the  fairy-story,  that  combination  of 
wisdom  and  romance,  in  an  effort  to  tame  her 
mate  and  to  make  him  a  better  father  to  her  chil 
dren,  until  such  stories  finally  became  a  rude 
creed  for  domestic  conduct,  softening  the  treat 
ment  that  men  accorded  to  women. 

These  first  pitiful  efforts  of  women,  so  wide 
spread  and  powerful  that  we  have  not  yet  escaped 
their  influence,  still  cast  vague  shadows  upon  the 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

vast  spaces  of  life,  shadows  that  are  dim  and  dis 
torted  because  of  their  distant  origin.  They  re 
mind  us  that  for  thousands  of  years  women  had 
nothing  to  oppose  against  unthinkable  brutality 
save  '  the  charm  of  words, '  no  other  implement 
with  which  to  subdue  the  fiercenesses  of  the 
world  about  them. 

During  the  weeks  that  the  Devil  Baby  drew 
multitudes  of  visitors  to  Hull-House,  my  mind 
was  opened  to  the  fact  that  new  knowledge  de 
rived  from  concrete  experience  is  continually  be 
ing  made  available  for  the  guidance  of  human 
life;  that  humble  women  are  still  establishing 
rules  of  conduct  as  best  they  may,  to  counteract 
the  base  temptations  of  a  man's  world.  Thou 
sands  of  women,  for  instance,  make  it  a  standard 
of  domestic  virtue  that  a  man  must  not  touch  his 
pay  envelope,  but  bring  it  home  unopened  to  his 
wife.  High  praise  is  contained  in  the  phrase, 
'  We  have  been  married  twenty  years  and  he  nev 
er  once  opened  his  own  envelope';  or  covert 
blame  in  the  statement,  '  Of  course  he  got  to  gam 
bling;  what  can  you  expect  from  a  man  who  al 
ways  opens  his  own  pay?' 

The  women  are  so  fatalistically  certain  of  this 
relation  of  punishment  to  domestic  sin,  of  reward 
to  domestic  virtue,  that  when  they  talk  about  it, 
as  they  so  constantly  did  in  connection  with  the 
Devil  Baby,  it  often  sounds  as  if  they  were  using 
the  words  of  a  widely  known  ritual.  Even  the 
young  girls  seized  upon  it  as  a  palpable  punish- 

66 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ment,  to  be  held  over  the  heads  of  reckless  friends. 
That  the  tale  was  useful  was  evidenced  by  many 
letters  similar  to  the  anonymous  epistle  here 
given. 

1  me  and  my  friends  we  work  in  talor  shop  and 
when  we  are  going  home  on  the  roby  street  car 
where  we  get  off  that  car  at  blue  island  ave.  we 
will  meet  some  fellows  sitting  at  that  street  where 
they  drink  some  beer  from  pail,  they  keep  look  in 
cars  all  time  and  they  will  wait  and  see  if  we  will 
come  sometimes  we  will  have  to  work,  but  they 
will  wait  so  long  they  are  tired  and  they  dont  care 
they  get  rest  so  long  but  a  girl  .what  works  in 
twine  mill  saw  them  talk  with  us  we  know  her 
good  and  she  say  what  youse  talk  with  old  drunk 
man  for  we  shall  come  to  thier  dance  when  it  will 
be  they  will  tell  us  and  we  should  know  all  about 
where  to  see  them  that  girl  she  say  oh  if  you  will 
go  with  them  you  will  get  devils  baby  like  some 
other  girls  did  who  we  knows,  she  say  Jane  Ad- 
dams  she  will  show  one  like  that  in  Hull  House 
if  you  will  go  down  there  we  shall  come  sometime 
and  we  will  see  if  that  is  trouth  we  do  not  believe 
her  for  she  is  friendly  with  them  old  men  herself 
when  she  go  out  from  her  work  they  will  wink  to 
her  and  say  something  else  to.  We  will  go  down 
and  see  you  and  make  a  lie  from  what  she  say. ' 

IV 

The  story  evidently  held  some  special  comfort 
for  hundreds  of  forlorn  women,  representatives  of 

67 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

that  vast  horde  of  the  denied  and  proscribed,  who 
had  long  found  themselves  confronted  by  those 
mysterious  and  impersonal  wrongs  which  are  ap 
parently  nobody's  fault  but  seem  to  be  inherent 
in  the  very  nature  of  things. 

Because  the  Devil  Baby  embodied  an  unde 
served  wrong  to  a  poor  mother,  whose  tender 
child  had  been  claimed  by  the  forces  of  evil,  his 
merely  reputed  presence  had  power  to  attract  to 
Hull-House  hundreds  of  women  who  had  been 
humbled  and  disgraced  by  their  children ;  mothers 
of  the  feeble-minded,  of  the  vicious,  of  the  crimi 
nal,  of  the  prostitute.  In  their  talk  it  was  as  if 
their  long  role  of  maternal  apology  and  protective 
reticence  had  at  last  broken  down;  as  if  they 
could  speak  out  freely  because  for  once  a  man  re 
sponsible  for  an  ill-begotten  child  had  been  'met 
up  with'  and  had  received  his  deserts.  Their 
sinister  version  of  the  story  was  that  the  father  of 
the  Devil  Baby  had  married  without  confessing  a 
hideous  crime  committed  years  before,  thus  basely 
deceiving  both  his  innocent  young  bride  and  the 
good  priest  who  performed  the  solemn  ceremony ; 
that  the  sin  had  become  incarnate  in  his  child, 
which,  to  the  horror  of  the  young  and  trusting 
mother,  had  been  born  with  all  the  outward  as 
pects  of  the  devil  himself. 

As  if  drawn  by  a  magnet,  week  after  week,  a 
procession  of  forlorn  women  in  search  of  the  Devil 
Baby  came  to  Hull-House  from  every  part  of  the 
city,  issuing  forth  from  the  many  homes  in  which 

68 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

dwelt  'the  two  unprofitable  goddesses,  Poverty 
and  Impossibility. '  With  an  understanding  that 
was  quickened  perhaps  by  my  own  acquaintance 
with  the  mysterious  child,  I  listened  to  many 
tragic  tales  from  the  visiting  women :  of  premature 
births,  'because  he  kicked  me  in  the  side';  of 
children  maimed  and  burned,  because  '  I  had  no 
one  to  leave  them  with  when  I  went  to  work. ' 
These  women  had  seen  the  tender  flesh  of  grow 
ing  little  bodies  given  over  to  death  because  '  he 
would  n't  let  me  send  for  the  doctor, '  or  because 
'there  was  no  money  to  pay  for  the  medicine.' 
But  even  these  mothers,  rendered  childless 
through  insensate  brutality,  were  less  pitiful  than 
some  of  the  others,  who  might  well  have  cried 
aloud  of  their  children  as  did  a  distracted  mother 
of  her  child  centuries  ago,  - 

That  God  should  send  this  one  thing  more 
Of  hunger  and  of  dread,  a  door 
Set  wide  to  every  wind  of  pain ! 

Such  was  the  mother  of  a  feeble-minded  boy 
who  said,  '  I  did  n't  have  a  devil  baby  myself,  but 
I  bore  a  poor  "innocent,"  who  made  me  fight 
devils  for  twenty-three  years.'  She  told  of  her 
son's  experiences,  from  the  time  the  other  little 
boys  had  put  him  up  to  stealing  that  they  might 
hide  in  safety  and  leave  him  to  be  found  with 
'the  goods'  on  him,  until,  grown  into  a  huge  man, 
he  fell  into  the  hands  of  professional  burglars ;  he 
was  evidently  the  dupe  and  stool-pigeon  of  the 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

vicious  and  criminal  until  the  very  day  he  was 
locked  into  the  State  Penitentiary.  'If  people 
played  with  him  a  little,  he  went  right  off  and  did 
anything  they  told  him  to,  and  now  he's  been 
sent  up  for  life.  We  call  such  innocents  "God's 
Fools"  in  the  old  country,  but  over  here  the  Devil 
himself  gets  them.  I've  fought  off  bad  men  and 
boys  from  the  poor  lamb  with  my  very  fists ;  no 
body  ever  came  near  the  house  except  such  like 
and  the  police  officers  who  were  always  arresting 
him.' 

There  were  a  goodly  number  of  visitors,  of  the 
type  of  those  to  be  found  in  every  large  city,  who 
are  on  the  verge  of  nervous  collapse  or  who  ex 
hibit  many  symptoms  of  mental  aberration  and 
yet  are  sufficiently  normal  to  be  at  large  most  of 
the  time  and  to  support  themselves  by  drudgery 
which  requires  little  mental  effort,  although  the 
exhaustion  resulting  from  the  work  they  are  able 
to  do  is  the  one  thing  from  which  they  should  be 
most  carefully  protected.  One  such  woman,  evi 
dently  obtaining  inscrutable  comfort  from  the 
story  of  the  Devil  Baby  even  after  she  had  be 
come  convinced  that  we  harbored  no  such  crea 
ture,  came  many  times  to  tell  of  her  longing  for 
her  son  who  had  joined  the  army  some  eighteen 
months  before  and  was  stationed  in  Alaska.  She 
always  began  with  the  same  words.  '  When  spring 
comes  and  the  snow  melts  so  that  I  know  he  could 
get  out,  I  can  hardly  stand  it.  You  know  I  was 
once  in  the  Insane  Asylum  for  three  years  at  a 

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THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

stretch,  and  since  then  I  have  n't  had  much  use  of 
my  mind  except  to  worry  with.  Of  course  I  know 
that  it  is  dangerous  for  me,  but  what  can  I  do? 
I  think  something  like  this:  "The  snow  is  melting, 
now  he  could  get  out,  but  his  officers  won't  let 
him  off,  and  if  he  runs  away  he'll  be  shot  for  a 
deserter  —  either  way  I'll  never  see  him  again; 
I'll  die  without  seeing  him"  -and  then  I  begin 
all  over  again  with  the  snow. '  After  a  pause,  she 
said,  'The  recruiting  officer  ought  not  to  have 
taken  him ;  he's  my  only  son  and  I'm  a  widow ;  it's 
against  the  rules,  but  he  was  so  crazy  to  go  that  I 
guess  he  lied  a  little.  At  any  rate,  the  government 
has  him  now  and  I  can't  get  him  back.  Without 
this  worry  about  him,  my  mind  would  be  all  right ; 
if  he  was  here  he  would  be  earning  money  and 
keeping  me  and  we  would  be  happy  all  day  long. ' 
Recalling  the  vagabondish  lad  who  had  never 
earned  much  money  and  had  certainly  never 
'kept'  his  hard-working  mother,  I  ventured  to 
suggest  that,  even  if  he  were  at  home,  he  might 
not  have  worked  these  hard  times,  that  he  might 
get  into  trouble  and  be  arrested,  —  I  did  not 
need  to  remind  her  that  he  had  already  been  ar 
rested  twice,  —  that  he  was  now  fed  and  shel 
tered  and  under  discipline,  and  I  added  hopefully 
something  about  seeing  the  world.  She  looked  at 
me  out  of  her  withdrawn  harried  eyes,  as  if  I 
were  speaking  a  foreign  tongue.  '  That  would  n't 
make  any  real  difference  to  me  —  the  work,  the 
money,  his  behaving  well  and  all  that,  if  I  could 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

cook  and  wash  for  him ;  I  don't  need  all  the  money 
I  earn  scrubbing  that  factory;  I  only  take  bread 
and  tea  for  supper,  and  I  choke  over  that,  think 
ing  of  him. ' 


A  sorrowful  woman  clad  in  heavy  black,  who 
came  one  day,  exhibited  such  a  capacity  for  pro 
longed  weeping  that  it  was  evidence  in  itself  of 
the  truth  of  at  least  half  her  statement,  that  she 
had  cried  herself  to  sleep  every  night  of  her  life 
for  fourteen  years  in  fulfillment  of  a  'curse'  laid 
upon  her  by  an  angry  man  that  'her  pillow  would 
be  wet  with  tears  as  long  as  she  lived.'  Her  re 
spectable  husband  had  kept  a  shop  in  the  Red 
Light  district,  because  he  found  it  profitable  to 
sell  to  the  men  and  women  who  lived  there.  She 
had  kept  house  in  the  rooms  '  over  the  store, '  from 
the  time  she  was  a  bride  newly  come  from  Russia, 
and  her  five  daughters  had  been  born  there,  but 
never  a  son  to  gladden  her  husband's  heart. 

She  took  such  a  feverish  interest  in  the  Devil 
Baby  that  when  I  was  obliged  to  disillusion  her,  I 
found  it  hard  to  take  away  her  comfort  in  the  be 
lief  that  the  Powers  that  Be  are  on  the  side  of  the 
woman,  when  her  husband  resents  too  many 
daughters.  But,  after  all,  the  birth  of  daughters 
was  but  an  incident  in  her  tale  of  unmitigated 
woe,  for  the  scoldings  of  a  disappointed  husband 
were  as  nothing  to  the  curse  of  a  strange  enemy, 
although  she  doubtless  had  a  confused  impression 

72 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

that  if  there  was  retribution  for  one  in  the  general 
scheme  of  things,  there  might  be  for  the  other. 

When  the  weeping  woman  finally  put  the  events 
of  her  disordered  life  in  some  sort  of  sequence,  it 
was  clear  that  about  fifteen  years  ago  she  had  re 
ported  to  the  police  a  vicious  house  whose  back 
door  opened  into  her  own  yard .  Her  husband  had 
forbidden  her  to  do  anything  about  it  and  had 
said  that  it  would  only  get  them  into  trouble; 
but  she  had  been  made  desperate  one  day  when 
she  saw  her  little  girl,  then  twelve  years  old,  come 
out  of  the  door,  gleefully  showing  her  younger 
sister  a  present  of  money.  Because  the  poor 
woman  had  tried  for  ten  years,  without  success,  to 
induce  her  husband  to  move  from  the  vicinity  of 
such  houses,  she  was  certain  that  she  could  save 
her  child  only  by  forcing  out  'the  bad  people' 
from  her  own  door-yard.  She  therefore  made  her 
one  frantic  effort,  found  her  way  to  the  city  hall, 
and  there  reported  the  house  to  the  chief  himself. 
Of  course,  'the  bad  people*  'stood  in  with  the 
police,  *  and  nothing  happened  to  them  except, 
perhaps,  a  fresh  levy  of  blackmail ;  but  the  keeper 
of  the  house,  beside  himself  with  rage,  made  the 
dire  threat  and  laid  the  curse  upon  her.  In  less 
than  a  year  from  that  time  he  had  enticed  her 
daughter  into  a  disreputable  house  in  another 
part  of  the  district.  The  poor  woman,  ringing 
one  doorbell  after  another,  had  never  been  able  to 
find  her;  but  the  girl's  sisters,  who  in  time  came  to 
know  where  she  was,  had  been  dazzled  by  her 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

mode  of  life.  The  weeping  mother  was  quite  sure 
that  two  of  her  daughters,  while  still  outwardly 
respectable  and  'working  downtown,'  earned 
money  in  the  devious  ways  which  they  had 
learned  all  about  when  they  were  little  children,  al 
though  for  the  past  five  years  the  now  prosperous 
husband  had  allowed  the  family  to  live  in  a  sub 
urb  where  the  two  younger  daughters  were  '  grow 
ing  up  respectable.' 

At  moments  it  seemed  possible  that  these 
simple  women,  representing  an  earlier  develop 
ment,  eagerly  seized  upon  the  story  simply  be 
cause  it  was  primitive  in  form  and  substance. 
Certainly  one  evening  a  long-forgotten  ballad 
made  an  unceasing  effort  to  come  to  the  surface 
of  my  mind,  as  I  talked  to  a  feeble  woman  who, 
in  the  last  stages  of  an  incurable  disease  from 
which  she  soon  afterwards  died,  had  been  helped 
off  the  street-car  in  front  of  Hull-House. 

The  ballad  tells  that  the  lover  of  a  proud  and 
jealous  mistress,  who  demanded  as  a  final  test  of 
devotion  that  he  bring  her  the  heart  of  his  mother, 
had  quickly  cut  the  heart  from  his  mother's 
breast  and  impetuously  returned  to  his  lady  bear 
ing  it  upon  a  salver;  but  that,  when  stumbling  in 
his  gallant  haste,  he  stooped  to  replace  upon  the 
silver  plate  his  mother's  heart  which  had  rolled 
upon  the  ground,  the  heart,  still  beating  with 
tender  solicitude,  whispered  the  hope  that  her 
child  was  not  hurt. 

The  ballad  itself  was  scarcely  more  exagger- 

74 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

ated  than  the  story  of  our  visitor  that  evening, 
who  had  made  the  desperate  effort  of  a  journey 
from  home  in  order  to  see  the  Devil  Baby.  I 
was  familiar  with  her  vicissitudes:  the  shiftless 
drinking  husband  and  the  large  family  of  children, 
all  of  whom  had  brought  her  sorrow  and  disgrace ; 
and  I  knew  that  her  heart's  desire  was  to  see 
again  before  she  died  her  youngest  son,  who  was  a 
life  prisoner  in  the  penitentiary.  She  was  confi 
dent  that  the  last  piteous  stage  of  her  disease 
would  secure  him  a  week's  parole,  founding  this 
forlorn  hope  upon  the  fact  that  'they  sometimes 
let  them  out  to  attend  a  mother's  funeral,  and 
perhaps  they'd  let  Joe  come  a  few  days  ahead ;  he 
could  pay  his  fare  afterwards  from  the  insurance 
money.  It  would  n't  take  much  to  bury  me. ' 

Again  we  went  over  the  hideous  story.  Joe 
had  violently  quarreled  with  a  woman,  the  pro 
prietor  of  the  house  in  which  his  disreputable  wife 
lived,  because  she  withheld  from  him  a  part  of 
his  wife's  '  earnings, '  and  in  the  altercation  had 
killed  her  —  a  situation,  one  would  say,  which  it 
would  be  difficult  for  even  a  mother  to  condone. 
But  not  at  all:  her  thin  gray  face  worked  with 
emotion,  her  trembling  hands  restlessly  pulled  at 
her  shabby  skirt  as  the  hands  of  the  dying  pluck 
at  the  sheets,  but  she  put  all  the  vitality  she 
could  muster  into  his  defense.  She  told  us  he  had 
legally  married  the  girl  who  supported  him,  'al 
though  Lily  had  been  so  long  in  that  life  that  few 
men  would  have  done  it.  Of  course  such  a  girl 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

must  have  a  protector  or  everybody  would  fleece 
her;  poor  Lily  said  to  the  day  of  her  death  that  he 
was  the  kindest  man  she  ever  knew,  and  treated 
her  the  whitest ;  that  she  herself  was  to  blame  for 
the  murder  because  she  told  on  the  old  miser,  and 
Joe  was  so  hot-headed  she  might  have  known  that 
he  would  draw  a  gun  for  her. '  The  gasping  moth 
er  concluded,  '  He  was  always  that  handsome  and 
had  such  a  way.  One  winter  when  I  was  scrub 
bing  in  an  office-building,  I'd  never  get  home 
much  before  twelve  o'clock;  but  Joe  would  open 
the  door  for  me  just  as  pleasant  as  if  he  had  n't 
been  waked  out  of  a  sound  sleep. ' 

She  was  so  triumphantly  unconscious  of  the  in 
congruity  of  a  sturdy  son  in  bed  while  his  mother 
earned  his  food,  that  her  auditors  said  never  a 
word,  and  in  silence  we  saw  a  hero  evolved  before 
our  eyes:  a  defender  of  the  oppressed,  the  best 
beloved  of  his  mother,  who  was  losing  his  high 
spirits  and  eating  his  heart  out  behind  prison 
bars.  He  could  well  defy  the  world  even  there, 
surrounded  as  he  was  by  that  invincible  affection 
which  assures  both  the  fortunate  and  unfortunate 
alike  that  we  are  loved,  not  according  to  our 
deserts,  but  in  response  to  some  profounder  law. 

This  imposing  revelation  of  maternal  solicitude 
was  an  instance  of  what  continually  happened  in 
connection  with  the  Devil  Baby.  In  the  midst 
of  the  most  tragic  recitals  there  remained  that 
something  in  the  souls  of  these  mothers  which 
has  been  called  the  great  revelation  of  tragedy, 

76 


THE  DEVIL  BABY  AT  HULL-HOUSE 

or  sometimes  the  great  illusion  of  tragedy  - 
that  which  has  power  in  its  own  right  to  make  life 
acceptable  and  at  rare  moments  even  beautiful. 

At  least,  during  the  weeks  when  the  Devil 
Baby  seemed  to  occupy  every  room  in  Hull- 
House,  one  was  conscious  that  all  human  vicissi 
tudes  are  in  the  end  melted  down  into  reminis 
cence,  and  that  a  metaphorical  statement  of 
those  profound  experiences  which  are  implicit  in 
human  nature  itself,  however  crude  in  form  the 
story  may  be,  has  a  singular  power  of  healing  the 
distracted  spirit. 

If  it  has  always  been  the  mission  of  literature 
to  translate  the  particular  act  into  something 
of  the  universal,  to  reduce  the  element  of  crude 
pain  in  the  isolated  experience  by  bringing  to  the 
sufferer  a  realization  that  his  is  but  the  common 
lot,  this  mission  may  have  been  performed  by 
such  stories  as  this  for  simple  hard-working  wo 
men,  who,  after  all,  at  any  given  moment  com 
pose  the  bulk  of  the  women  in  the  world. 


Every  Man's  Natural  Desire  to 
be  Somebody  Else 

By  Samuel  McChord  Crothers 

i 

SEVERAL  years  ago  a  young  man  came  to  my 
study  with  a  manuscript  which  he  wished  me  to 
criticize. 

'It  is  only  a  little  bit  of  my  work,'  he  said 
modestly,  '  and  it  will  not  take  you  long  to  look  it 
over.  In  fact  it  is  only  the  first  chapter,  in  which 
I  explain  the  Universe/ 

I  suppose  that  we  have  all  had  moments  of  sud 
den  illumination  when  it  occurred  to  us  that  we 
had  explained  the  Universe,  and  it  was  so  easy 
for  us  that  we  wondered  why  we  had  not  done  it 
before.  Some  thought  drifted  into  our  mind  and 
filled  us  with  vague  forebodings  of  omniscience. 
It  was  not  an  ordinary  thought,  that  explained 
only  a  fragment  of  existence.  It  explained  every 
thing.  It  proved  one  thing  and  it  proved  the  op 
posite  just  as  well.  It  explained  why  things  are 
as  they  are,  and  if  it  should  turn  out  that  they 
are  not  that  way  at  all,  it  would  prove  that  fact 

78 


A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

also.  In  the  light  of  our  great  thought  chaos 
seemed  rational. 

Such  thoughts  usually  occur  about  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  Having  explained  the  Universe, 
we  relapse  into  satisfied  slumber.  When,  a  few 
hours  later,  we  rise,  we  wonder  what  the  explana 
tion  was. 

Now  and  then,  however,  one  of  these  highly 
explanatory  ideas  remains  to  comfort  us  in  our 
waking  hours.  Such  a  thought  is  that  which  I 
here  throw  out,  and  which  has  doubtless  at  some 
early  hour  occurred  to  most  of  my  readers.  It  is 
that  every  man  has  a  natural  desire  to  be  some 
body  else. 

This  does  not  explain  the  Universe,  but  it  ex 
plains  that  perplexing  part  of  it  which  we  call 
Human  Nature.  It  explains  why  so  many  in 
telligent  people,  who  deal  skillfully  with  matters 
of  fact,  make  such  a  mess  of  it  when  they  deal 
with  their  fellow  creatures.  It  explains  why  we 
get  on  as  well  as  we  do  with  strangers,  and  why 
we  do  not  get  on  better  with  our  friends.  It  ex 
plains  why  people  are  so  often  offended  when  we 
say  nice  things  about  them,  and  why  it  is  that, 
when  we  say  harsh  things  about  them,  they  take 
it  as  a  compliment.  It  explains  why  people  marry 
their  opposites  and  why  they  live  happily  ever 
afterwards.  It  also  explains  why  some  people 
don't.  It  explains  the  meaning  of  tact  and  its 
opposite. 

The  tactless  person  treats  a  person  according 

79 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

to  a  scientific  method  as  if  he  were  a  thing.  Now, 
in  dealing  with  a  thing,  you  must  first  find  out 
what  it  is,  and  then  act  accordingly.  But  with  a 
person,  you  must  first  find  out  what  he  is  and 
then  carefully  conceal  from  him  the  fact  that  you 
have  made  the  discovery. 

The  tactless  person  can  never  be  made  to  under 
stand  this.  He  prides  himself  on  taking  people 
as  they  are  without  being  aware  that  that  is  not 
the  way  they  want  to  be  taken. 

He  has  a  keen  eye  for  the  obvious,  and  calls  at 
tention  to  it.  Age,  sex,  color,  nationality,  previ 
ous  condition  of  servitude,  and  all  the  facts  that 
are  interesting  to  the  census-taker,  are  apparent 
to  him  and  are  made  the  basis  of  his  conversation. 
When  he  meets  one  who  is  older  than  he,  he  is 
conscious  of  the  fact,  and  emphasizes  by  every 
polite  attention  the  disparity  in  years.  He  has  an 
idea  that  at  a  certain  period  in  life  the  highest 
tribute  of  respect  is  to  be  urged  to  rise  out  of  one 
chair  and  take  another  that  is  presumably  more 
comfortable.  It  does  not  occur  to  him  that  there 
may  remain  any  tastes  that  are  not  sedentary. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  sees  a  callow  youth  and  ad 
dresses  himself  to  the  obvious  callowness,  and 
thereby  makes  himself  thoroughly  disliked.  For, 
strange  to  say,  the  youth  prefers  to  be  addressed 
as  a  person  of  precocious  maturity. 

The  literalist,  observing  that  most  people  talk 
shop,  takes  it  for  granted  that  they  like  to  talk 
shop.  This  is  a  mistake.  They  do  it  because  it 

80 


A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

is  the  easiest  thing  to  do,  but  they  resent  having 
attention  called  to  their  limitations.  A  man's 
profession  does  not  necessarily  coincide  with  his 
natural  aptitude  or  with  his  predominant  desire. 
When  you  meet  a  member  of  the  Supreme  Court 
you  may  assume  that  he  is  gifted  with  a  judicial 
mind.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  that  is  the  only 
quality  of  mind  he  has;  nor  that  when,  out  of 
court,  he  gives  you  a  piece  of  his  mind,  it  will  be 
a  piece  of  his  judicial  mind  that  he  gives. 

My  acquaintance  with  royalty  is  limited  to 
photographs  of  royal  groups,  which  exhibit  a 
high  degree  of  domesticity.  It  would  seem  that 
the  business  of  royalty  when  pursued  as  a  steady 
job  becomes  tiresome,  and  that  when  they  have 
their  pictures  taken  they  endeavor  to  look  as 
much  like  ordinary  folks  as  possible  —  and  they 
usually  succeed. 

The  member  of  one  profession  is  always  flat 
tered  by  being  taken  for  a  skilled  practitioner  of 
another.  Try  it  on  your  minister.  Instead  of 
saying,  'That  was  an  excellent  sermon  of  yours 
this  morning/  say,  'As  I  listened  to  your  cogent 
argument,  I  thought  what  a  successful  lawyer 
you  would  have  made. '  Then  he  will  say,  '  I  did 
think  of  taking  to  the  law. ' 

If  you  had  belonged  to  the  court  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  you  would  have  proved  a  poor  courtier 
indeed  if  you  had  praised  His  Majesty's  cam 
paigns.  Frederick  knew  that  he  was  a  Prussian 
general,  but  he  wanted  to  be  a  French  literary 

81 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

man.  If  you  wished  to  gain  his  favor,  you  should 
have  told  him  that  in  your  opinion  he  excelled 
Voltaire. 

We  do  not  like  to  have  too  much  attention 
drawn  to  our  present  circumstances.  They  may 
be  well  enough  in  their  way,  but  we  can  think  of 
something  which  would  be  more  fitting  for  us. 
We  have  either  seen  better  days  or  we  expect 
them. 

Suppose  you  had  visited  Napoleon  in  Elba  and 
had  sought  to  ingratiate  yourself  with  him. 

'Sire/  you  would  have  said,  'this  is  a  beautiful 
little  empire  of  yours,  so  snug  and  cosy  and  quiet. 
It  is  just  such  a  domain  as  is  suited  to  a  man  in 
your  condition.  The  climate  is  excellent.  Every 
thing  is  peaceful.  It  must  be  delightful  to  rule 
where  everything  is  arranged  for  you  and  the  de 
tails  are  taken  care  of  by  others.  As  I  came  to 
your  dominion  I  saw  a  line  of  British  frigates 
guarding  your  shores.  The  evidences  of  such 
thoughtfulness  are  everywhere. ' 

Your  praise  of  his  present  condition  would  not 
have  endeared  you  to  Napoleon.  You  were  ad 
dressing  him  as  the  Emperor  of  Elba.  In  his  own 
eyes  he  was  Emperor,  though  in  Elba. 

It  is  such  a  misapprehension  which  irritates 
any  mature  human  being  when  his  environment 
is  taken  as  the  measure  of  his  personality. 

The  man  with  a  literal  mind  moves  in  a  per 
petual  comedy  of  errors.  It  is  not  a  question  of 

82 


A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

two  Dromios.  There  are  half  a  dozen  Dromios 
under  one  hat. 

How  casually  introductions  are  made,  as  if  it 
were  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  make  two 
human  beings  acquainted!  Your  friend  says,  *I 
want  you  to  know  Mr.  Stifflekin,'  and  you  say 
that  you  are  happy  to  know  him.  But  does 
either  of  you  know  the  enigma  that  goes  under 
the  name  of  Stifflekin?  You  may  know  what  he 
looks  like  and  where  he  resides  and  what  he  does 
for  a  living.  But  that  is  all  in  the  present  tense. 
To  really  know  him  you  must  not  only  know  what 
he  is  but  what  he  used  to  be;  what  he  used  to 
think  he  was ;  what  he  used  to  think  he  ought  to 
be  and  might  be  if  he  worked  hard  enough.  You 
must  know  what  he  might  have  been  if  certain 
things  had  happened  otherwise,  and  you  must 
know  what  might  have  happened  otherwise  if  he 
had  been  otherwise.  All  these  complexities  are  a 
part  of  his  own  dim  apprehension  of  himself. 
They  are  what  make  him  so  much  more  interest 
ing  to  himself  than  he  is  to  any  one  else. 

It  is  this  consciousness  of  the  inadequacy  of 
our  knowledge  which  makes  us  so  embarrassed 
when  we  offer  any  service  to  another.  Will  he 
take  it  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  is  given? 

That  was  an  awkward  moment  when  Stanley, 
after  all  his  hardships  in  his  search  for  Dr.  Liv 
ingstone,  at  last  found  the  Doctor  by  a  lake  in 
Central  Africa.  Stanley  held  out  his  hand  and 
said  stiffly,  'Dr.  Livingstone,  I  presume?'  Stan- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ley  had  heroically  plunged  through  the  equatorial 
forests  to  find  Livingstone  and  to  bring  him  back 
to  civilization.  But  Livingstone  was  not  par 
ticularly  anxious  to  be  found,  and  had  a  decided 
objection  to  being  brought  back  to  civilization. 
What  he  wanted  was  a  new  adventure.  Stanley 
did  not  find  the  real  Livingstone  till  he  discovered 
that  the  old  man  was  as  young  at  heart  as  him 
self.  The  two  men  became  acquainted  only  when 
they  began  to  plan  a  new  expedition  to  find  the 
source  of  the  Nile. 

II 

The  natural  desire  of  every  man  to  be  some 
body  else  explains  many  of  the  minor  irritations 
of  life.  It  prevents  that  perfect  organization  of 
society  in  which  every  one  should  know  his  place 
and  keep  it.  The  desire  to  be  somebody  else  leads 
us  to  practice  on  work  that  does  not  strictly  be 
long  to  us.  We  all  have  aptitudes  and  talents 
that  overflow  the  narrow  bounds  of  our  trade  or 
profession.  Every  man  feels  that  he  is  bigger 
than  his  job,  and  he  is  all  the  time  doing  what 
theologians  call  'works  of  supererogation.' 

The  serious-minded  housemaid  is  not  content 
to  do  what  she  is  told  to  do.  She  has  an  unex 
pended  balance  of  energy.  She  wants  to  be  a 
general  household  reformer.  So  she  goes  to  the 
desk  of  the  titular  master  of  the  house  and  gives 
it  a  thorough  reformation.  She  arranges  the  pap 
ers  according  to  her  idea  of  neatness.  When  the 


A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

poor  gentleman  returns  and  finds  his  familiar 
chaos  transformed  into  a  hateful  order,  he  be 
comes  a  reactionary. 

The  serious  manager  of  a  street  railway  com 
pany  is  not  content  with  the  simple  duty  of 
transporting  passengers  cheaply  and  comfort 
ably.  He  wants  to  exercise  the  functions  of  a 
lecturer  in  an  ethical  culture  society.  While  the 
transported  victim  is  swaying  precariously  from 
the  end  of  a  strap  he  reads  a  notice  urging  him  to 
practice  Christian  courtesy  and  not  to  push. 
While  the  poor  wretch  pores  over  this  counsel  of 
perfection,  he  feels  like  answering  as  did  Junius 
to  the  Duke  of  Grafton,  'My  Lord,  injuries  may 
be  atoned  for  and  forgiven,  but  insults  admit  of 
no  compensation.  ' 

A  man  enters  a  barber's  shop  with  the  simple 
desire  of  being  shaved.  But  he  meets  with  the 
more  ambitious  desires  of  the  barber.  The  seri 
ous  barber  is  not  content  with  any  slight  contri 
bution  to  human  welfare.  He  insists  that  his 
client  shall  be  shampooed,  manicured,  massaged, 
steamed  beneath  boiling  towels,  cooled  off  by 
electric  fans  and,  while  all  this  is  going  on,  that 
he  shall  have  his  boots  blacked. 

Have  you  never  marveled  at  the  patience  of 
people  in  having  so  many  things  done  to  them 
that  they  don't  want,  just  to  avoid  hurting  the 
feelings  of  professional  people  who  want  to  do 
more  than  is  expected  of  them?  You  watch  the 
stoical  countenance  of  the  passenger  in  a  Pull- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

man  car  as  he  stands  up  to  be  brushed.  The 
chances  are  that  he  does  n't  want  to  be  brushed. 
He  would  prefer  to  leave  the  dust  on  his  coat 
rather  than  to  be  compelled  to  swallow  it.  But 
he  knows  what  is  expected  of  him.  It  is  a  part  of 
the  solemn  ritual  of  traveling.  It  precedes  the 
offering. 

The  fact  that  every  man  desires  to  be  somebody 
else  explains  many  of  the  aberrations  of  artists 
and  literary  men.  The  painters,  dramatists, 
musicians,  poets,  and  novelists  are  just  as  hu 
man  as  housemaids  and  railway  managers  and 
porters.  They  want  to  do  '  all  the  good  they  can 
to  all  the  people  they  can  in  all  the  ways  they 
can. '  They  get  tired  of  the  ways  they  are  used 
to  and  like  to  try  new  combinations.  So  they 
are  continually  mixing  things.  The  practitioner 
of  one  art  tries  to  produce  effects  that  are  proper 
to  another  art. 

A  musician  wants  to  be  a  painter  and  use  his 
violin  as  if  it  were  a  brush.  He  would  have  us  see 
the  sunset  glories  that  he  is  painting  for  us.  A 
painter  wants  to  be  a  musician  and  paint  sym 
phonies,  and  he  is  grieved  because  the  unin- 
structed  cannot  hear  his  pictures,  although  the 
colors  do  swear  at  each  other.  Another  painter 
wants  to  be  an  architect  and  build  up  his  picture 
as  if  it  were  made  of  cubes  of  brick.  It  looks 
like  brick-work,  but  to  the  natural  eye  it  does  n't 
look  like  a  picture.  A  prose-writer  gets  tired  of 
writing  prose,  and  wants  to  be  a  poet.  So  he 

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A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

begins  every  line  with  a  capital  letter,  and  keeps 
on  writing  prose.        t 

You  go  to  the  theatre  with  the  simple-minded 
Shakespearean  idea  that  the  play's  the  thing. 
But  the  playwright  wants  to  be  a  pathologist. 
So  you  discover  that  you  have  dropped  into  a 
grewsome  clinic.  You  sought  innocent  relaxation, 
but  you  are  one  of  the  non-elect  and  have  gone  to 
the  place  prepared  for  you.  You  must  see  the 
thing  through.  The  fact  that  you  have  troubles 
of  your  own  is  not  a  sufficient  claim  for  exemption. 

Or  you  take  up  a  novel  expecting  it  to  be  a 
work  of  fiction.  But  the  novelist  has  other  views. 
He  wants  to  be  your  spiritual  adviser.  He  must 
do  something  to  your  mind,  he  must  rearrange 
your  fundamental  ideas,  he  must  massage  your 
soul,  and  generally  brush  you  off.  All  this  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  you  don't  want  to  be 
brushed  off  and  set  to  rights.  You  don't  want 
him  to  do  anything  to  your  mind.  It's  the  only 
mind  you  have  and  you  need  it  in  your  own  busi 
ness. 

in 

But  if  the  desire  of  every  man  to  be  somebody 
else  accounts  for  many  whimsicalities  of  human 
conduct  and  for  many  aberrations  in  the  arts,  it 
cannot  be  lightly  dismissed  as  belonging  only  to 
the  realm  of  comedy.  It  has  its  origin  in  the 
nature  of  things.  The  reason  why  every  man 
wants  to  be  somebody  else  is  that  he  can  remem- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ber  the  time  when  he  was  somebody  else.  What 
we  call  personal  identity  is  a  very  changeable 
thing,  as  all  of  us  realize  when  we  look  over  old 
photographs  and  read  old  letters. 

The  oldest  man  now  living  is  but  a  few  years 
removed  from  the  undifferentiated  germ-plasm, 
which  might  have  developed  into  almost  any 
thing.  In  the  beginning  he  was  a  bundle  of  pos 
sibilities.  Every  actuality  that  is  developed 
means  a  decrease  in  the  rich  variety  of  possibili 
ties.  In  becoming  one  thing  it  becomes  impos 
sible  to  be  something  else. 

The  delight  in  being  a  boy  lies  in  the  fact  that 
the  possibilities  are  still  manifold.  The  boy  feels 
that  he  can  be  anything  that  he  desires.  He  is 
conscious  that  he  has  capacities  that  would  make 
him  a  successful  banker.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  attractions  in  a  life  of  adventure  in  the 
South  Seas.  It  would  be  pleasant  to  lie  under  a 
bread-fruit  tree  and  let  the  fruit  drop  into  his 
mouth,  to  the  admiration  of  the  gentle  savages 
who  would  gather  about  him.  Or  he  might  be  a 
saint  —  not  a  commonplace  modern  saint  who 
does  chores  and  attends  tiresome  committee  meet 
ings,  but  a  saint  such  as  one  reads  about,  who 
gives  away  his  rich  robes  and  his  purse  of  gold  to 
the  first  beggar  he  meets,  and  then  goes  on  his 
carefree  way  through  the  forest  to  convert  inter 
esting  robbers.  He  feels  that  he  might  practice 
that  kind  of  unscientific  charity,  if  his  father 
would  furnish  him  with  the  money  to  give  away. 

88 


A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

But  by  and  by  he  learns  that  making  a  success 
in  the  banking  business  is  not  consistent  with  ex 
cursions  to  the  South  Seas  or  with  the  more  pic 
turesque  and  unusual  forms  of  saintliness.  If  he 
is  to  be  in  a  bank  he  must  do  as  the  bankers  do. 

Parents  and  teachers  conspire  together  to 
make  a  man  of  him,  which  means  making  a  par 
ticular  kind  of  man  of  him.  All  mental  processes 
which  are  not  useful  must  be  suppressed.  The 
sum  of  their  admonitions  is  that  he  must  pay 
attention.  That  is  precisely  what  he  is  doing. 
He  is  paying  attention  to  a  variety  of  things 
that  escape  the  adult  mind.  As  he  wriggles  on 
the  bench  in  the  school-room,  he  pays  attention 
to  all  that  is  going  on.  He  attends  to  what  is 
going  on  out-of-doors ;  he  sees  the  weak  points  of 
his  fellow  pupils,  against  whom  he  is  planning 
punitive  expeditions;  and  he  is  delightfully  con 
scious  of  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  teacher.  More 
over,  he  is  a  youthful  artist  and  his  sketches  from 
life  give  acute  joy  to  his  contemporaries  when 
they  are  furtively  passed  around. 

But  the  schoolmaster  says  sternly,  'My  boy, 
you  must  learn  to  pay  attention;  that  is  to  say, 
you  must  not  pay  attention  to  so  many  things, 
but  you  must  pay  attention  to  one  thing,  namely, 
the  second  declension.' 

Now,  the  second  declension  is  the  least  inter 
esting  thing  in  the  room,  but  unless  he  confines 
his  attention  to  it  he  will  never  learn  it.  Educa- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

tion  demands  narrowing  of  attention  in  the  inter 
est  of  efficiency. 

A  man  may,  by  dint  of  application  to  a  particu 
lar  subject,  become  a  successful  merchant  or  real- 
estate  man  or  chemist  or  overseer  of  the  poor. 
But  he  cannot  be  all  these  things  at  the  same  time. 
He  must  make  his  choice.  Having  in  the  presence 
of  witnesses  taken  himself  for  better  or  worse,  he 
must,  forsaking  all  others,  cleave  to  that  alone. 
The  consequence  is  that,  by  the  time  he  is  forty, 
he  has  become  one  kind  of  a  man,  and  is  able  to 
do  one  kind  of  work.  He  has  acquired  a  stock 
of  ideas  true  enough  for  his  purposes,  but  not  so 
transcendentally  true  as  to  interfere  with  his 
business.  His  neighbors  know  where  to  find  him, 
and  they  do  not  need  to  take  a  spiritual  elevator. 
He  does  business  on  the  ground  floor.  He  has 
gained  in  practicality,  but  has  lost  in  the  quality 
of  interestingness. 

The  old  prophet  declared  that  the  young  men 
dream  dreams  and  the  old  men  see  visions,  but 
he  did  not  say  anything  about  the  middle-aged 
men.  They  have  to  look  after  the  business  end. 

But  has  the  man  whose  working  hours  are  so 
full  of  responsibilities  changed  so  much  as  he 
seems  to  have  done?  When  he  is  talking  shop  is 
he  'all  there'?  I  think  not.  There  are  elusive 
personalities  that  are  in  hiding.  As  the  rambling 
mansions  of  the  old  Catholic  families  had  secret 
panels  opening  into  the  'priest's  hole/  to  which 
the  family  resorted  for  spiritual  comfort,  so  in 

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A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

the  mind  of  the  most  successful  man  there  are 
secret  chambers  where  are  hidden  his  unsuccess 
ful  ventures,  his  romantic  ambitions,  his  unful 
filled  promises.  All  that  he  dreamed  of  as  pos 
sible  is  somewhere  concealed  in  the  man's  heart. 
He  would  not  for  the  world  have  the  public  know 
how  much  he  cares  for  the  selves  that  have  not 
had  a  fair  chance  to  come  into  the  light  of  day. 
You  do  not  know  a  man  until  you  know  his  lost 
Atlantis,  and  his  Utopia  for  which  he  still  hopes 
to  set  sail. 

When  Dogberry  asserted  that  he  was '  as  pretty 
a  piece  of  flesh  as  any  is  in  Messina,'  and  'one 
that  hath  two  gowns  and  everything  handsome 
about  him, '  he  was  pointing  out  what  he  deemed 
to  be  quite  obvious.  It  was  in  a  more  intimate 
tone  that  he  boasted,  'and  a  fellow  that  hath  had 
losses. ' 

When  Julius  Caesar  rode  through  the  streets  of 
Rome  in  his  chariot,  his  laurel  crown  seemed  to 
the  populace  a  symbol  of  his  present  greatness. 
But  gossip  has  it  that  Caesar  at  that  time  desired 
to  be  younger  than  he  was,  and  that  before  ap 
pearing  in  public  he  carefully  arranged  his  laurel 
wreath  so  as  to  conceal  the  fact  that  he  had  had 
losses. 

Much  that  passes  for  pride  in  the  behavior  of 
the  great  comes  from  the  fear  of  the  betrayal  of 
emotions  that  belong  to  a  simpler  manner  of  life. 
When  the  sons  of  Jacob  saw  the  great  Egyptian 
officer  to  whom  they  appealed  turn  away  from 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

them,  they  little  knew  what  was  going  on.  *  And 
Joseph  made  haste,  for  his  bowels  did  yearn  upon 
his  brother:  and  he  sought  where  to  weep,  and 
he  entered  into  his  chamber,  and  wept  there. 
And  he  washed  his  face,  and  went  out,  and  re 
frained  himself. '  Joseph  did  n't  want  to  be  a 
great  man.  He  wanted  to  be  human.  It  was 
hard  to  refrain  himself. 

IV 

What  of  the  lost  arts  of  childhood,  the  lost 
audacities  and  ambitions  and  romantic  admira 
tions  of  adolescence?  What  becomes  of  the  sym 
pathies  which  make  us  feel  our  kinship  to  all 
sorts  of  people?  What  becomes  of  the  early 
curiosity  in  regard  to  things  which  were  none  of 
our  business?  We  ask  as  Saint  Paul  asked  of  the 
Galatians,  'Ye  began  well;  who  did  hinder  you?' 

The  answer  is  not  wholly  to  our  discredit.  We 
do  not  develop  all  parts  of  our  nature  because  we 
are  not  allowed  to  do  so.  Walt  Whitman  might 
exult  over  the  Spontaneous  Me.  But  nobody  is 
paid  for  being  spontaneous.  A  spontaneous 
switchman  on  the  railway  would  be  a  menace  to 
the  traveling  public.  We  prefer  some  one  less 
temperamental. 

As  civilization  advances  and  work  becomes 
more  specialized,  it  becomes  impossible  for  any 
one  to  find  free  and  full  development  for  all  his 
natural  powers  in  any  recognized  occupation. 
What  then  becomes  of  the  other  selves?  The 

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A  MAN'S  DESIRE  TO  BE  SOMEBODY  ELSE 

answer  must  be  that  playgrounds  must  be  pro 
vided  for  them  outside  the  confines  of  daily  busi 
ness.  As  work  becomes  more  engrossing  and 
narrowing,  the  need  is  more  urgent  for  recog 
nized  and  carefully  guarded  periods  of  leisure. 

The  old  Hebrew  sage  declared,  'Wisdom  com- 
eth  from  the  opportunity  of  leisure. '  It  does  not 
mean  that  a  wise  man  must  belong  to  what  we 
call  the  leisure  classes.  It  means  that,  if  one  has 
only  a  little  free  time  at  his  disposal,  he  must  use 
that  time  for  the  refreshment  of  his  hidden  selves. 
If  he  cannot  have  a  sabbath  rest  of  twenty-four 
hours,  he  must  learn  to  sanctify  little  sabbaths, 
it  may  be  of  ten  minutes'  length.  In  them  he 
shall  do  no  manner  of  work.  It  is  not  enough 
that  the  self  that  works  and  receives  wages  shall 
be  recognized  and  protected ;  the  world  must  be 
made  safe  for  our  other  selves.  Does  not  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  say  that  every  man 
has  an  inalienable  right  to  the  pursuit  of  happi 
ness? 

The  old-time  minister,  after  he  had  exhorted 
the  believers  at  considerable  length,  used  to  turn 
to  a  personage  who  for  homiletical  purposes  was 
known  as  the  Objector.  To  him  he  addressed  his 
most  labored  arguments.  At  this  point  I  am  con 
scious  of  the  presence  of  the  Objector. 

'All  you  say/  he  remarks,  'in  praise  of  your 
favorite  platitude  is  true  to  a  fault.  But  what 
has  all  this  to  do  with  the  War?  There  is  only 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

one  thing  in  these  days  worth  thinking  about  — 
at  least,  it  is  the  only  thing  we  can  think  about. ' 

'  I  agree  with  you,  courteous  Objector.  No  mat 
ter  where  we  start,  we  all  come  back  to  this  point: 
Who  was  to  blame  for  the  War,  and  how  is  it 
coming  out?  Our  explanatory  idea  has  a  direct 
bearing  on  the  question  before  us.  The  Prussian 
militarists  had  a  painstaking  knowledge  of  facts, 
but  they  had  a  contempt  for  human  nature.  Their 
tactlessness  was  almost  beyond  belief.  They 
treated  persons  as  if  they  were  things.  They 
treated  facts  with  deadly  seriousness,  but  had  no 
regard  for  feelings.  They  had  spies  all  over  the 
world  to  report  all  that  could  be  seen,  but  they 
took  no  account  of  what  could  not  be  seen.  So, 
while  they  were  dealing  scientifically  with  the  ob 
vious  facts  and  forces,  all  the  hidden  powers  of 
the  human  soul  were  being  turned  against  them. 
Prussianism  insists  on  highly  specialized  men  who 
have  no  sympathies  to  interfere  with  their  effi 
ciency.  Having  adopted  a  standard,  all  varia 
tion  must  be  suppressed.  It  is  against  this  effort 
to  suppress  the  human  variations  that  we  are 
fighting.  We  don't  want  all  men  to  be  reduced 
to  one  pattern. ' 

'But  what  about  th»  -Kaiser?  Does  your  for 
mula  explain  him?  L  _es  he  want  to  be  some 
body  elseu  •>•.? 

'I  confes.,  dear  Objector,  that  it  is  probably 
a  new  idea  to  him ;  but  he  may  come  to  it. ' 


The  Temple's  Difficult  Door 

By  Robert  M.  Gay 

Do  you  remember  the  little  old  white  church 
which,  when  we  were  boys,  we  attended  more  or 
less  unwillingly,  according  to  the  season,  with  its 
stiff-backed  pews  in  which  we  sat  aching,  count 
ing  the  pipes  in  the  organ  and  the  balusters  in  the 
altar-rail  and  the  dentils  in  the  moulding  of  the 
pulpit?  Of  course  you  remember  it,  and  the  little 
old  lady  who  sat  in  a  corner  ejaculating  her  halle 
lujahs  and  amens  with  the  regularity  of  a  cuckoo- 
clock,  and  the  solemn  precentor  who  sawed  out 
the  time  with  his  hand,  and  the  preacher  who  took 
his  texts  from  the  Old  Testament  and  rolled  the 
names  of  the  Ten  Tribes  and  their  enemies  as  a 
sweet  morsel  under  his  tongue.  The  little  old 
lady,  you  recollect,  was  valiant  in  prayer-meeting. 
She  was  not  afraid  to  criticize  the  minister,  or  to 
repeat  week  by  week  the^t  sry  of  her  conversion 
in  her  ninth  year.  Nor  du \  she  fail  continually  to 
impress  upon  us  boys —  lacing  u5  v*«u  ietimes, 
with  uplifted  finger  —  the  immanence  d  him  who 
goeth  to  and  fro  in  the  earth  and  rageth  like  a 
lion,  seeking  whom  he  may  devour.  Ah,  those 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

prayer-meetings!  Shall  we,  shall  we  ever  forget 
them?  Or  the  references  to  the  sinners  who  sat 
on  the  back  row  (where  we  always  sat)  ?  Or  the 
wailing  hymns,  or  the  dismal  testimonies,  or  the 
waves  of  dejection  that  swept  over  us  during  the 
cataloguing  of  our  omissions  and  commissions? 

And  there  was  always  a  boy !  Do  you  remem 
ber  him  ?  A  boy  of  our  own  age,  mind  you,  a  boy 
who  ostentatiously  arose  and,  with  the  decorum 
of  a  deacon,  dwelt  upon  his  former  iniquities  and 
present  beatitude.  We  expected  this  of  an  occa 
sional  girl,  yet  the  girls  never  did  it;  a  mumbled 
text,  a  flurried  word  or  two,  were  the  extent  of 
their  temerity.  As  for  us,  it  was  not  our  custom 
to  discuss  our  souls,  even  among  ourselves.  It  is 
said  that  to  forget  the  existence  of  a  stomach  is 
the  best  symptom  of  health  in  that  useful  organ, 
and,  if  the  analogy  holds,  our  souls  must  have 
been  singularly  robust.  We  were  bashful  about 
our  virtues  and  vices;  we  could  not  fathom  the 
sentiments  of  Take  Time  to  be  Holy;  we  were  in 
mortal  fear  that  some  day  somebody  might  con 
vict  us  of  sin  and  hale  us  forthwith  into  the  fold 
of  the  elect.  Yet  here  was  a  boy  who  flaunted  his 
goodness  in  our  faces.  It  was  evident  that  he 
was  not  normal,  that  it  lay  with  us  as  a  duty  to 
puncture  the  bubble  of  his  presumptuousness. 

The  time  came,  you  remember,  very  oppor 
tunely.  On  a  memorable  evening  it  was  an 
nounced  that  this  Infant  Samuel,  as  the  little  old 
lady  called  him,  was  to  recite  to  the  congregation 


THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICULT  DOOR 

the  entire  Book  of  Esther  from  memory.  For  us, 
who  found  it  beyond  our  power  to  remember  a 
Golden  Text  of  ten  words  for  ten  minutes,  such  a 
performance  was  unbelievable.  We  put  our  heads 
together  and  evolved  a  plot,  dark,  yet  charming 
in  its  simple  effectiveness.  We  decided  to  make 
faces  at  him. 

We  were  expert  in  the  art  of  face-making,  be 
cause  we  had  practiced  it  for  weeks  upon  our  sis 
ters  who  sang  in  the  choir.  They  had  suffered, 
but  were  now  immune.  The  grimaces  of  a  Gri- 
maldi  could  not  have  ruffled  the  calm  of  their 
scornful  features. 

We  planted  ourselves  in  the  front  row,  and  the 
boy  began  his  recital.  In  time  his  preoccupied 
and  lack-lustre  eye  wandered  in  our  direction  and 
rested  upon  us.  He  started,  looked  away,  stam 
mered,  recovered,  and  went  bravely  on.  But  we 
knew  that  he  would  look  back.  We  dared  not 
glance  at  our  neighbors,  but  had  faith  that  each 
was  doing  his  duty. 

Of  course  he  did  look  back,  but  why  prolong 
the  mournful  tale?  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
Esther  and  Ahasuerus  remained  unwedded  and 
Haman  unhung;  and  that  our  victim  retired  amid 
the  titterings  of  the  judicious  and  the  commisera 
tions  of  the  pious,  while  we  plumed  ourselves  upon 
a  difficult  task  laudably  accomplished. 

I  have  indulged  in  this  long  reminiscence,  which 
probably  can  be  matched  in  the  experience  of 
most  of  my  masculine  readers,  because  it  is  pro- 

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vocative  of  thoughts  that  deserve  to  be  aired.  An 
essay  might  be  written  upon  the  pathos  that  lies 
in  the  spectacle  of  a  boy  who  is  incited  to  a  pub 
lic  display  of  his  goodness;  in  the  docility  which 
is  as  clay  in  the  hands  of  deluded  adults.  That 
he  suffered  there  can  be  no  doubt  —  not  one 
half  so  much  under  the  ordeal  of  our  contriving, 
which,  I  hope,  cured  him,  as  under  the  isolation 
which  his  dedication  to  goodness  made  inevitable. 
He  was  a  lonely  boy,  though  he  may  not  have 
realized  that  he  was.  That  he  could  ever  under 
stand  his  fellows,  or  be  understood  by  them,  was 
impossible.  He  was  the  victim  of  the  most  per 
verse  fate  that  can  afflict  a  boy :  he  had  been  born 
in  the  bosom  of  a  family  whose  piety  contained 
not  a  grain  of  the  salt  of  humor,  not  a  particle  of 
the  leaven  of  imagination,  not  —  But  I  am  for 
getting.  I  wish  to  ask  the  reader's  consideration, 
not  of  the  victim,  but  of  the  tormentors. 

Why  is  it  that  boys  are  suspicious  of  that  ap 
proximate  moral  perfection  called  goodness? 
Girls  find  a  deep  satisfaction  in  being  good  —  in 
being  neat,  in  being  clean,  in  being  decorous.  If 
they  are  not  these,  we  call  them  tomboys,  still 
casting  the  onus  of  sinfulness  upon  the  other  sex. 
When  we  boys  confided  our  exploit  to  the  little 
girls,  we  found  that  they  openly  defended  the 
boy,  though,  it  must  be  admitted,  they  privately 
admired  us,  as  is  the  way  of  their  sex.  Our 
fathers,  informed  by  our  sisters,  and  instigated  by 
our  mothers,  solemnly  reproached  us,  but  with  a 

98 


THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICULT  DOOR 

twinkle  that  would  not  be  hidden.  Manifestly, 
the  trail  of  the  serpent  was  over  them,  too.  They 
were  sorry  that  they  had  not  sat  in  the  choir. 

The  meekest  of  men  love  to  tell  how  bad  they 
were  as  boys,  hugging  their  fiction  of  early  de 
pravity  with  an  unregenerate  glee.  The  more  in 
nocuous  they  may  be  now,  the  more  they  love  to 
boast  —  especially  to  their  wives  —  of  these  phan 
tasmal  wild  oats.  The  ladies  pretend  to  be  shocked 
at  the  stories,  but  are  glad  to  believe  them ;  and 
so  it  is  not  surprising  if  some  men,  in  their  fear 
of  being  mistaken  for  saints,  remain  boys  all 
their  lives. 

The  pursuit  of  the  ideal  is  complicated  by 
man's  suspicion  of  goodness,  and  by  woman's 
curious,  but  characteristic,  indecision  whether 
to  espouse  perfection  or  imperfection.  Gifted 
with  a  natural  propensity  toward  virtue  and  pro 
priety  and  neatness  and  respectability  and  all 
the  other  approximate  perfections  of  life,  attain 
ing  them  with  ease  and  wearing  them  with  grace, 
she  of  course  values  them  little  enough  in  man. 
His  foibles  interest  her  more  than  his  virtues. 
She  admires  even  while  she  condemns.  He,  be 
cause  he  is  a  man,  prefers  admiration  to  commen 
dation. 

In  education,  man  as  a  rule  inculcates  ideals  of 
perfection  without  pretending  to  practice  them; 
but  woman,  with  an  iron  logic  which,  man's  as 
persions  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  is 
characteristic  of  her,  not  only  points  but  leads 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

the  way.  Hence  it  is  that  some  teachers  of  her 
sex  have  two  manners,  the  human  for  social  occa 
sions,  and  the  divine  for  the  class-room.  In  the 
privacy  of  their  homes  they  have  their  imperfec 
tions;  in  the  class-room  they  are  icily  perfect. 
Their  perfectness  extends  to  such  details  as  facial 
expression  and  tone  of  voice.  Occasionally  a 
man  adopts  the  duplex  character,  but  with  de 
plorable  result.  I  remember  such  a  one  in  high 
school.  Those  of  us  who  had  the  good  fortune 
to  meet  him  socially,  found  that  he  had  his  pec 
cadillos  of  character,  manner,  and  language,  but 
in  the  school  he  was  a  pattern  which  we  despaired 
of  imitating.  From  his  necktie  to  his  reading  of 
Burke's  'Conciliation,'  he  was  without  spot  or 
blemish.  We  did  not  dare  to  love  him;  we  gave 
up  all  hope  of  emulation.  We  nicknamed  him 
Mrs.  Dawson,  and  let  it  go  at  that. 

But  women  carry  this  dual  character  more  suc 
cessfully  than  men.  Whether  because  they  are 
better  actors  or  because  we  confuse  saintliness 
with  femininity,  even  as  boys  we  are  more  ready 
to  forgive  it  in  them.  To  the  little  girls,  it  seems 
perfectly  natural.  They  catch  the  idea  readily 
and  practice  their  teachers'  precisions  and  prud 
eries  upon  the  family.  We  must  admit,  too,  that  in 
the  art  of  being  a  pattern,  women  show  a  sterner 
conscientiousness  than  men.  They  are  not  con 
stitutionally  so  lazy.  It  requires  hard  and  sus 
tained  effort  to  be  a  pattern,  an  inveterate  and 
dogged  attention  to  detail.  It  is  chiefly  here  that 

100 


THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICI/LT  DOOR 

we  men  fail.  The  male  saints  —  witness  Jerome 
—  had  a  time  of  it  with  their  petty  temptations, 
simply  because  sainthood  is  largely  a  matter  of 
detail.  Most  men  are  good  enough  in  essentials, 
but  fail  in  the  little  things;  the  little  things,  of 
which  woman  is  enamored, — too  often,  the  slave. 
To  be  perfect  gives  her  a  satisfaction  that  man 
will  never  understand;  and,  prompted  by  the 
constitutional  laziness  aforesaid,  he  takes  refuge 
in  calling  goodness  womanish. 

His  institutions,  therefore,  are  good  enough  in 
essentials;  his  political  organizations  and  govern 
ments,  his  bureaus  and  offices  and  federations 
and  unions,  all  are  nobly  planned,  but  lack  the 
feminine  touch  that  makes  for  perfection.  His 
streets  are  dirty  and  so  are  his  politics;  his  laws 
need  dusting;  a  little  sweeping  would  not  hurt 
his  governments ;  his  various  organizations  would 
be  none  the  worse  for  some  polishing  and  weeding 
and  clipping  of  loose  threads  and  sewing  up  of 
rents  and  various  other  species  of  revamping. 
All  these  last  subtleties  are  beyond  him,  just  as, 
be  he  never  so  neat,  are  all  the  tiny  sweetnesses 
and  refinements  and  knots  and  bows  and  satisfy 
ing  knick-knacks  of  his  wife's  person.  She  is  a 
creature  of  soupQons  and  nuances  and  intuitive 
niceties.  She  can  endure  no  compromise  with 
disorder  or  dirt  or  decay.  Her  motes  are  all 
beams  until  they  are  demolished;  she  uses  a 
mountain  of  faith  to  move  a  mustard-seed;  she 
cannot  see  the  polished  surface  for  the  speck  of 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

dust  that  is  on  it.  In  her  extreme  development 
she  spends  her  life  doing  the  million  and  one 
trifles  that  man  would  leave  undone. 

The  trouble  is  that,  not  satisfied  with  all  this, 
she  longs  to  make  him  perfect,  too.  Never  de 
terred  by  the  stupendousness  of  the  task,  she 
goes  on,  century  by  century,  generation  by  gen 
eration,  teaching  him,  preaching  to  him,  marry 
ing  him ;  gently  leading  him  or  tyrannously  com 
pelling  him  toward  the  heaven  of  her  ideal.  And 
here  again  her  gaze  is  microscopic.  In  her  atten 
tion  to  his  foibles  she  is  liable  to  overlook  his  sins. 
She  can  seldom  understand  badness  in  boys,  nor 
can  ever  see  that  the  boy  who  is  most  bad  in  small 
matters  may  be  the  most  good  in  large.  She  loves 
to  keep  her  male  offspring  lamblike,  and  tries  his 
docility  by  making  him  wear  long  hair  and  wide 
collars  and  linen  and  ruffles  and  lace,  never  learn 
ing  but  through  hard  experience  that,  like  the 
puppy,  he  takes  naturally  to  mud  and  feels  at 
ease  only  close  to  the  soil.  When  he  at  last  rebels 
and  privily  snips  off  his  hair  and  rends  his  sashes 
and  furbelows,  she  weeps,  not  because  of  the  loss 
of  material,  but  because  of  the  loss  of  an  ideal. 

And  who  can  blame  her?  It  is  seldom  enough 
in  this  world  that  we  can  kiss  and  fondle  an  ideal, 
except  in  dreams. 

I  have  a  theory  that  our  school  laws  should  be 
revised  and  that  we  should  confide  our  grammar- 
school  teaching  of  boys  only  to  women  who  have 
been  married.  My  reason  is  not  the  one  the 

1 02 


THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICULT  DOOR 

reader  is  imagining,  however.  It  is  not  because 
she  will  have  had  children.  No.  I  do  not  go  so 
far  as  that.  I  merely  demand  that  she  shall  have 
had  a  husband.  He  is  quite  sufficient.  He  is  a 
male.  A  year's  association  with  him  will  have 
softened  her  fibre,  will  have  aroused  in  her  mind 
doubts  of  the  perfectibility  of  mankind.  Then, 
then  she  will  be  ready  to  teach  boys. 

Yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  every  teacher  who 
has  managed  to  remain  human  is  confronted  by 
a  dilemma.  As  a  teacher,  he  is  expected  to  incul 
cate  ideals  of  perfection,  not  only  in  studies,  but 
in  deportment ;  and  yet,  when  he  happens  to  come 
upon  a  student  who  approaches  perfection,  it  is 
a  mournful  occasion.  The  student  may  be  admir 
able,  but  he  is  dull  company.  It  has  been  sug 
gested  that  teaching  can  be  a  satisfying  profes 
sion  only  to  very  big  or  very  little  natures.  I 
suppose  that  the  idea  is  that  the  big  nature  sees 
the  future  in  the  instant,  tolerates  the  present  im 
perfection,  dreaming  of  a  distant  flawlessness; 
while  the  little  nature  satisfies  itself  by  attaining 
perfection  in  trifles. 

The  average  man  or  woman  who  has  drifted 
into  the  profession  is  saved  from  despair  or  in 
sanity  by  that  biological  interest  in,  and  curios 
ity  about,  humanity,  which  we  call  humor.  He 
knows  that  everlasting  concern  with  perfection 
in  trifles  is  a  belittler  of  souls;  that  correcting 
sentences  and  paragraphs  and  Latin  and  German 
exercises  and  algebraic  problems  and  geometrical 

103 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

proofs  is  poor  food  for  a  human  mind.  On  the 
other  hand,  instinct  tells  him  that  the  larger  per 
fection  is  cold ;  that  it  dwells  in  the  rarefied  air  of 
the  mountain-tops;  that  it  is  un-human.  To  love 
the  derelict  student  is  treason  to  his  profession; 
yet,  as  he  looks  back  over  the  long  line  of  pupils 
who  have  passed  through  his  hands,  he  sees  that 
the  ones  who  remain  warm  and  vivid  in  his  mem 
ory  are  those  who  fell  most  short  of  the  very 
ideals  which  he  tried  to  inculcate. 

Among  all  the  students  in  a  certain  school,  I 
have  a  living  recollection  of  just  one,  and  he  was 
the  most  imperfect  student  in  it.  He  refused  to 
study,  he  refused  to  behave,  he  insisted  on  fighting 
and  bringing  snakes  to  school  in  his  pocket  and 
-  I  do  not  exaggerate  —  standing  on  his  head 
in  the  middle  of  a  recitation.  He  passed  most  of 
his  days  sitting  in  the  headmaster's  office,  study 
ing  demurely  when  that  gentleman  was  present, 
and  making  paper  flying-machines  when  surveil 
lance  relaxed.  Yet,  as  I  search  my  heart,  I  find 
that  my  memories  of  him  are  pleasant;  that  I 
should  like  to  see  him  again,  even  at  the  price 
of  having  to  recapture  his  garter-snakes,  or  of 
having  to  turn  him  right-side-up  during  a  reci 
tation.  He  was  much  misunderstood.  Some  of 
his  teachers,  having  no  faith  in  my  theory  of  the 
interestingness  of  the  imperfect,  found  him  a 
thorn  in  the  flesh,  and  predicted  for  him  a  sudden 
end  by  suspension;  and  there  were  doubtless 
times  when,  in  an  access  of  impatience,  I  longed 

104 


THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICULT  DOOR 

for  the  end  to  come  and  was  ready  to  officiate  at 
it.  He  shattered  the  pedagogic  ideal.  Try  as  I 
would,  I  was  unable  to  discover  in  him  ideals  of 
any  sort,  and  he  refused  to  adopt  any  that  I  of 
fered,  however  edifying.  Yet  all  the  good  little 
boys  to  whom  he  administered  black  eyes  with 
the  utmost  generosity  have  faded  from  my  mem 
ory  and  he  stands  out  the  brighter  for  the  years 
that  have  gone.  If  he  had  been  good,  he,  too, 
would  long  since  have  been  consigned  to  the  limbo 
of  'the  dream  of  things  that  were.'  Viewed  in 
the  narrow  light  of  class  discipline,  he  was  a  bur 
den,  like  the  grasshopper;  in  the  broad  and  genial 
glow  that  falls  from  a  humorous  philosophy  of 
life,  he  was  a  joy,  a  heart-filling  atomy  of  mis 
chief,  a  triumphant  example  of  the  imperfectness 
of  humanity  and  the  humanness  of  imperfection. 
We  can  postulate  so  much  of  the  imperfect 
thing  and  so  little  of  the  perfect.  Flawlessness 
leaves  the  weaker  imagination  so  little  to  take 
hold  of:  it  is  slippery.  Even  woman,  with  that 
inconsistency  which  makes  her  adorable,  really 
loves  perfection  no  more  than  we.  Every  one 
knows  that  a  little  girl  loves  an  old  doll,  or  a  rag 
doll,  or  a  one-legged  doll,  better  than  the  most 
expensive  Parisian  wax  doll  with  real  hair,  and 
eyes  that  open  and  shut.  The  Parisian  beauty  has 
been  longed  for  for  months,  but  now  that  it  has 
become  an  entity,  it  leaves  the  child  cold.  If  it 
is  so  lucky  as  to  lose  an  arm  or  some  sawdust, 
there  may  be  hope  for  it ;  but  so  long  as  it  remains 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

new  and  whole,  it  can  never  hope  to  enter  the 
warmest  precincts  of  the  little  girl's  heart.  'To 
keep  in  sight  Perfection/  says  a  contemporary 
poet,  '  is  the  artist's  best  delight, '  and  his  bitter 
est  pang  that  he  can  do  no  more  than  that;  yet 
in  another  epigram  the  same  poet  speaks  as  fol 
lows  :  — 

The  thousand  painful  steps  at  last  are  trod, 
At  last  the  temple's  difficult  door  we  win. 

Perfect  upon  his  pedestal,  the  god 
Freezes  us  hopeless  when  we  enter  in. 

The  little  girl  is  tasting  this  experience.  The 
contemplation  of  elastic  joints,  mechanical  eyes, 
and  waxen  complexion  warmed  the  cockles  of  her 
heart,  but  the  embodiment  of  these  in  a  palpable 
doll  freezes  her  hopeless.  If  the  poet,  with  more 
imagination,  suffers  too,  and  the  highest  natures 
-  those  which  we  call  the  transcendental  —  whiff 
the  sadness  that  lies  in  the  attainment  of  the  per 
fect,  surely  the  unimaginative  mass  of  mankind 
can  be  excused  if  they  find  the  inter-lunar  regions 
chilly. 

In  reckless  moments  I  wonder  whether  the 
Greek  statues  did  not  suffer  more  happily  at  the 
hands  of  fate  when  they  lost  their  arms  and 
heads  and  legs  than  we  are  accustomed  to  think ; 
whether  their  dilapidation  has  not  given  them  a 
place  in  our  hearts  instead  of  merely  in  our  heads ; 
has  not  couched  them  in  our  love  instead  of 
merely  pedestaled  them  in  our  reverence. 

1 06 


THE  TEMPLE'S  DIFFICULT  DOOR 

Or,  to  take  an  illustration  from  a  lower  plane, 
may  it  not  be  that  we  get  a  keener  pleasure  out  of 
eating  an  imperfect  apple?  It  is  neither  the  best 
possible  apple,  which  would  be  perfect,  nor  the 
worst  possible  apple,  which  would  have  a  kind  of 
negative  perfection;  it  has  a  worm  at  the  core; 
but  I  wonder  whether  we  do  not  enjoy  it  more  be 
cause  we  have  to  eat  the  more  carefully  to  keep 
from  eating  him.  Besides,  he  arouses  in  our  mind 
all  sorts  of  questionings.  Why  is  he  there?  What 
kind  of  worm  is  he?  How  did  he  get  in?  How 
would  he  have  got  out  if  we  had  not  ousted  him? 
And  —  note  this  —  what  sort  of  an  apple  would 
it  have  been  if  he  had  taken  up  his  residence  else 
where? 

I  am  rather  proud  of  this  little  apologue  of  the 
apple.  For  the  perfect  apple  could  have  roused 
no  queries  which  the  defective  apple  does  not. 
The  same  subtle  influences  went  to  make  both: 
the  same  elements,  the  same  forces,  the  same 
chemical  processes.  But  the  defective  apple  has 
in  addition  to  all  these  —  the  worm. 

There  is  'some  strangeness'  even  'in  beauty.' 
The  perfect  rhythm  is  intolerable.  We  demand 
chiaroscuro  in  life  as  in  color.  The  preciousness 
of  the  ointment  is  the  more  evident  for  the  fly. 
'We  love  people  for  their  vices,'  so  the  vices  do 
not  make  them  despicable. 

If  the  gods  that  sit  above  have  a  sense  of  hu 
mor,  they  must  find  us  grown  men  and  women  as 
funny  and  as  sad  as  we  find  the  boys  and  girls 

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and  dogs.  Not  knowing  the  sentiments  of  the 
gods,  we  have  to  content  ourselves  with  those  of 
the  poets  and  humorists  who,  we  fondly  imagine, 
have  in  them  something  of  the  god-like  vision. 
They  look  at  humanity  from  above.  And  they 
find  that  the  spectacle  of  humanity  trying  to  be 
what  it  cannot  be,  facing  both  ways,  on  the  thresh 
old  of  heaven  casting  a  longing,  lingering  look 
behind,  is  comic  and  tragic  in  its  very  essence;  for 
comedy  and  tragedy  differ  chiefly  in  degree.  In 
the  imperfection  of  humanity  lie  its  tragedy  and 
its  humor.  Without  it,  this  would  be  a  happier 
world ;  but  with  it,  it  is  a  merrier. 


Exile  and  Postman 

By  Jean  Kenyon  Mackenzie 

IT  used  to  make  me  homesick,  in  our  little  African 
clearing,  to  see  the  albino  woman.  She  would 
move  about  among  her  brown  companions  like  a 
flame  —  and  her  white  body,  that  flickered  in 
the  sun  and  glimmered  in  the  shade,  used  to 
knock  at  the  door  of  nostalgia.  Homesick  people 
always  long  for  a  visit,  and  that  albino  was  so 
white ! 

Once,  to  our  neighborhood,  where  in  those  days 
white  women  did  not  come,  there  came  a  white 
woman.  She  did  not  lodge  with  us;  she  lodged 
with  the  white  officer  because  she  was  an  officer's 
wife.  We  used  to  wonder  if  she  would  call  upon 
us.  One  of  us  had  a  pair  of  field-glasses,  and  we 
used  to  watch  her  little  figure  coming  and  going 
about  the  clearing  on  the  government  hill.  When 
one  day  she  was  seen  to  come  down  into  our  val 
ley  by  the  zigzag  trail,  we  thought  we  had  a  Visit. 
I  cannot  tell  you  how  anxious  we  were,  in  that 
little  bark  house,  to  make  a  good  appearance  — 
or  what  fresh  disposals  were  made,  with  our  eyes 
upon  that  descent,  of  our  properties.  I  do  not 

109 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

wish  to  make  you  too  sad,  but  that  white  woman 
did  not  visit  us.  She  went  away.  She  did  not 
know  about  us,  or  about  exiles  —  that  they  are 
always  dreaming  of  a  Visit. 

It  seems  a  hard  thing,  sometimes,  when  night 
closes  the  doors  of  all  the  little  trails,  that  the  day 
has  passed  without  a  visitor.  It  is  true  of  exiles 
that  they  have  the  most  unreasonable  expecta 
tions  of  the  sort,  based  perhaps  upon  the  migra 
tions  of  swallows,  and  not  relinquished  until  the 
hour  of  dusk.  Yes,  then  the  little  trails  of  the 
forest  are  perceived  by  the  mind's  eye  —  which 
like  a  cat's  eyes  sees  them  better  for  the  dark  — 
to  wander  away  into  an  infinite  distance  and  a 
solitude. 

Dusk  is  altogether  the  most  illuminating  hour 
for  the  exile ;  he  then  knows  so  exactly  where  he  is ; 
he  has  a  perfectly  visual  sense  of  his  surroundings. 
He  sees  where  he  is,  but  how  came  he  to  be  there? 
The  geography  of  his  circumstance  is  plain,  but 
not  the  logic.  He  who  has  no  other  companions 
than  himself  suspects  this  companion,  in  that 
hour  of  dusk,  to  be  a  fool.  It  must  be  a  poor  fool, 
he  thinks,  who  has  drifted  into  such  a  clearing  by 
such  a  river! 

The  forest  of  the  Cameroon  is  as  good  a  place 
as  any  to  be  homesick;  but  I  will  not  be  saying 
that  the  members  of  my  profession  —  and  I  am 
a  missionary  —  are  chronic  sufferers.  Mission 
aries  are,  in  the  main,  gay,  and  for  excellent  rea 
sons  —  some  of  them  pagan  reasons,  for  they  are 

no 


EXILE  AND  POSTMAN 

little  brothers  of  Antaeus ;  some  of  them  Christian 
reasons,  for  they  are  of  the  company  of  successful 
fishermen.  A  fisherman  with  a  good  catch  can 
defy  even  the  dusk;  his  string  of  silver  fish  is  a 
lantern  to  his  feet. 

No,  if  there  were  an  altar  and  a  service  to  pla 
cate  nostalgia  it  would  not  be  that  fisherman  who 
would  most  attend  that  service.  The  path  to 
that  altar  would  be  worn  brown  by  the  feet  of  the 
trader.  I  think  the  trader  is  lonelier  than  the 
missionaries  are;  he  is  better* versed  in  solitude. 
He  goes  into  the  forest  with  a  backward  look;  he 
comes  out  of  the  forest  sometimes  with  a  secret 
and  a  stricken  countenance.  More  than  mis 
sionaries  do,  he  does.  More  often  than  they,  he 
builds  out  of  his  lonely  horror  and  the  license  of 
solitude  a  perverse  habitation  for  his  soul.  Some 
times  —  and  this  is  very  sad  —  he  is  afraid.  He 
lingers  and  lingers  on  the  margin  of  that  green 
sea  of  forest. 

'The  heart, '  say  the  Bulu,  'has  gone  to  hide  in 
the  dark. '  And  this  is  a  Bulu  way  of  saying  that 
the  heart  is  not  worn  upon  the  sleeve.  Well,  upon 
the  sleeve  of  the  white-drill  suits  that  beach- 
traders  wear  there  is,  I  will  agree,  no  device  of 
hearts.  But  those  lonely  inland  traders,  —  those 
that  have  traveled  ten,  twenty,  thirty  days  from 
their  kind,  —  what  is  that  they  sometimes  seem 
to  wear  upon  the  sleeve  of  their  singlets?  And 
who  cares  where  he  wears  his  heart  if  there  is 
never  a  white  man's  eye  to  fall  upon  it!  In  those 

in 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

little  bark  huts  on  the  trading  posts,  where  young 
white  men  pale  with  the  passing  hours,  there 
comes  to  be  a  careless  fashion  in  wear,  whether  of 
hearts  or  of  collars.  In  the  warm  dusk  of  those 
little  houses,  where  there  is  an  earthen  floor,  where 
there  are  tin  trade-boxes  as  bright  as  jockeys' 
jackets,  where  there  are  trade-cloths  printed  with 
violent  designs,  where  there  is  salt  fish  and  cheap 
scent  and  tobacco,  —  where  all  these  desirable 
things  may  be  had  for  ivory  and  rubber,  —  there 
the  trader  may  wear  his  heart  upon  his  sleeve 
without  shame.  None  of  those  brilliant  eyes,  set 
in  those  dark  faces,  know  a  white  man's  heart 
when  they  see  it.  There  in  his  hut  is  a  monotony 
of  brown  bodies  quick  with  vehement  gestures; 
there  is  a  tumult  of  controversy  in  a  tongue  he 
does  not  know.  The  sudden  glitter  of  brass  orna 
ment  is  there,  and  the  glitter  of  brass  spears. 
There  are  fantastic  head-dresses  studded  with 
buttons  and  shells  and  beads,  and  scented  with 
the  odor  of  wood-fires.  Between  those  brown 
bodies  and  the  body  of  the  white  man  lies  the 
counter.  More  lies  between  them  than  this. 
There  are  between  them  such  barriers  that  the 
white  man  is  not  more  lonely  when  he  is  alone. 

Yet  how  still  it  is  of  an  idle  day  under  the 
thatched  leaves  of  that  little  house !  The  sun  does 
its  exaggerated  violence  to  the  yellow  earth  of  the 
clearing ;  the  forest  hangs  its  arras  over  its  secret. 
How  far  it  is,  in  this  place  not  named  on  the  map, 
from  Manchester!  How,  when  the  rain  falls,  it  is 

112 


EXILE  AND  POSTMAN 

other  than  rainfall  on  the  Clyde!  How  the  pale 
fruit  that  hangs  high  on  the  ajap  tree  is  not  like 
the  apples  that  ripen  in  Wishaw! 

Do  not  speak  of  apples !  Nostalgia  in  her  cruel 
equipment  carries  a  scented  phantom  apple. 

At  night  there  is  about  that  young  trader  a 
trouble  of  drums  that  never  rest.  There  is  the 
sharp  concerted  cry  of  the  dancers.  There  is  the 
concerted  wail  for  the  dead.  There  is  about  him 
all  the  rhythmic  beating  of  the  mysterious  life 
of  his  neighborhood,  tormenting  him  where  he 
lies  under  his  mosquito  net.  For  this  he  will  rise 
and  walk  about,  the  ember  of  his  pipe  drifting 
back  and  forth  in  the  dark,  and  his  gramophone, 
roused  by  himself,  making  its  limited  obedient 
effort. 

There  is  this  about  a  gramophone :  it  is  a  thing 
that  speaks  the  home  tongue.  I  have  seen  him 
sitting  under  the  eaves  of  his  little  hut,  by  his 
little  table  spread  with  a  checkered  cloth,  his 
gramophone  beside  him,  trying,  with  its  tale  of 
the  old  grouse  gunroom,  to  divert  that  lonely 
meal.  Now  that  I  think  of  it,  the  gramophone  is 
a  kind  of  hero  of  my  little  piece  —  a  kind  of 
David  with  five  tunes  to  do  battle  with  nostalgia. 
Back  in  the  tent  broods  Saul,  and  this  poor  pa 
tient  David  plays  the  endless  round  of  five  tunes. 
Until  some  day  there  is  a  javelin  in  the  wall,  and 
a  proud  black  man  goes  away  with  a  gramophone 
into  the  wilderness. 

The  night  sky  does  more  permanent  ministry 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 


to  the  homesick,,  and  of  all  the  bright  ministers 
the  moon  is  the  most  effectual.  It  is  the  great 
reflector  of  lights;  there  it  comes,  swinging  up  its 
v  old  path  in  the  sky,  and  the  fires  of  home  are  mir 
rored  on  its  disk.  You  who  read  have  spread 
your  hands,  in  your  hour  of  homesickness,  to  those 
phantom  fires  —  and  other  hands  are  always 
spread.  Some  of  us  were  sitting  on  our  heels 
about  a  little  flame  in  a  new  clearing  ;  all  of  us  were 
alien  in  that  clearing;  one  of  us  was  white.  And 
the  black  woman  said  to  the  white  woman  when 
the  moonlight  fell  upon  all  those  women  faces,— 

1  The  moon  looks  upon  the  villages  and  upon  the 
home  village.  We  black  people,  when  we  sit  in 
the  towns  of  strangers  and  the  moon  shines,  we 
say,  "Now  by  the  light  of  this  same  moon  the 
people  at  home  dance  to  the  drums!"  However 
far  we  walk,  we  look  upon  the  moon  and  we  re 
member  our  friends  at  home.  ' 

Upon  another  moonlight  night,  sitting  in  a  for-r 
est  camp  with  young  black  girls  for  companions, 
these  sang  for  me  a  little  set  of  songs  —  the  songs, 
they  told  me,  of  the  moon  :  - 

'Ah,  mone  zip,  alu  a  daneya!    Ah  mone  zip'1 

This  little  refrain  they  sang,  clapping  their 
hands  ever  so  lightly,  and  the  meaning  of  the 
singing  was  a  warning. 

It  was  a  song  of  the  moon,  a  song  for  wanderers. 
And  the  moon  on  that  remembered  night,  drag- 

l'  Ah,  little  gazelle,  the  night  has  deepened  !  Ah,  little  gazelle  !  ' 


EXILE  AND  POSTMAN 

ging  its  net  of  broken  silver  cords  in  among  the 
trees  of  the  forest,  caught  everywhere  the  wan 
dering  hearts  and  drew  them  back  on  the  little 
rough  trails  to  the  home  fires.  Every  night  that 
is  a  moonlight  night  there  is  the  casting  of  that 
silver  net  upon  far  rivers  and  forests  deeper  than 
rivers  —  wherever  aliens  make  a  bed  of  leaves  or 
sleep  on  a  canvas  cot. 

On  such  a  night,  and  caught  in  such  a  net,  I 
have  met  the  postman.  Yes,  on  just  such  a  night, 
when  the  world  appeared  as  it  hangs  in  space,  a 
crystal  globe,  and  when  so  observed  from  a  little 
clearing  in  an  African  forest,  it  was  seen  to  be 
charted  for  voyagers,  and  all  its  little  paths  ran 
readily  about  the  globe  to  that  gilt  side  which  is 
home.  On  such  a  night,  and  upon  such  a  path, 
I  met  the  postman. 

To  hang  upon  a  little  wicket  gate  under  the 
moon  at  the  end  of  a  moon-filled  clearing  in  a 
breach  of  the  forest,  —  to  see  the  black  body  of 
the  postman  suddenly  darken  the  checkered  light 
upon  the  path  from  the  west,  —  how  to  speak  of 
this  adventure  with  moderation!  How  to  speak 
of  postmen  at  all  with  moderation !  And  of  those 
postmen  who  thread  the  lonely  forests  of  the 
world,  their  loads  upon  their  backs,  their  rations 
of  salt  fish  on  top  of  their  loads ;  how  to  recall  their 
aspects,  their  monthly  or  bi-monthly  or  semi-an 
nual  arrivals,  the  priceless  treasures  they  carry! 
how  speak  of  these  things  to  men  and  women  who 
have  never  followed  the  little  ga'zelle  into  those 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

forests  where  the  night  has  deepened;  who  have 
never  felt  the  divinity  in  postmen ! 

Imagine  that  there  is  a  people  in  this  world  who 
let  a  postman  walk  up  the  path  unattended,  and 
who  wait  until  he  knocks  on  the  door!  Who  do 
not  shout  to  their  neighbors  when  they  receive  a 
letter,  and  who  receive  one  every  day!  These 
items  alone  prove  the  truth  of  the  Bulu  proverb 
that  there  are  tribes  and  tribes,  and  customs  and 
customs. 

And  I  will  agree  that  there  are,  even  on  the 
trails  of  the  wilderness,  postmen  and  postmen. 
There  are  even,  though  I  hate  to  dwell  upon  it, 
postmen  whom  I  do  not  trust.  Not  all  postmen 
have  wings  upon  their  heels.  The  ideal  postman 
does  of  course  fly.  He  is  like 

The  bird  let  loose  in  eastern  skies 
When  hastening  fondly  home. 

He  avoids  idle  wanderers.  But  they  do  not  all 
do  so.  I  remember  to  have  been  wakened  one 
night  in  a  village  by  the  gossip  of  two  old  head 
men.  They  had  met  before  my  tent;  there  in  the 
moonlight  they  chatted  together.  All  the  little 
life  of  the  village  was  sleeping;  the  two  old  men 
alone  were  abroad.  They  were  about  the  business 
of  the  post.  It  is  a  pioneer  custom  in  Africa,  east 
and  west,  that  the  white  man's  local  letter  is 
franked  from  town  to  town.  The  black  man 
to  whom  the  white  man  gives  his  letter  carries  it 
to  the  headman  of  the  next  settlement,  who  car- 

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EXILE  AND  POSTMAN 

ries  it  in  turn  to  his  brother  headman  down  the 
trail;  and  so  from  hand  to  hand,  by  day  and  by 
night,  with  a  glance  from  any  passing  white  man, 
the  letter  goes  forward.  Such  a  letter  —  carried 
as  the  custom  is,  in  a  split  rod  from  which  there 
hung,  like  a  flag,  a  bit  of  turkey  red  —  changed 
hands  that  night  before  my  tent.  And  now  I 
write  it  in  a  white  man's  book  that  the  postmen 
loitered. 

To  stand  and  chat  there  in  the  moonlight  with 
the  exile's  letter  in  your  hands  —  how  could  you 
do  that,  you  two  old  heartless  headmen?  I 
watched  you  from  my  little  green  tent.  It  is  re 
membered  of  you  that  you  so  delayed,  while  in 
some  lonely  hamlet  under  that  same  moon  a 
white  man  sickened  for  a  letter.  And  when  one 
gave  the  forked  stick  to  the  other,  it  was  then  too 
late.  If  indeed,  as  you  would  say,  you  spoke  no 
more  than  five  words  of  gossip  one  to  the  other, 
those  words  were  five  too  many.  It  is  remem 
bered  of  you,  and  a  thousand  nights  since  when 
I  have  waited  for  the  mail,  if  it  were  a  moonlight 
night,  I  have  told  myself  with  an  extreme  self- 
pity  and  a  bitterness,  *  The  carrier  is  gossiping  in 
some  clearing.  *  I  have  seen  in  my  heart  that  man 
with  the  load  of  mail  upon  his  back,  standing  for 
hours  by  a  friend  of  his,  laughing  and  asking  news 
one  of  the  other.  This  conjured  vision  of  two 
black  men  holding  up  the  mail  is  the  sad  issue  of 
an  imagination  infected  beyond  cleansing.  You 
see,  /  saw  them  do  it. 

117 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

Some  postmen  have  come  in  late  because  their 
feet  were  sore.  And  some,  in  passing  through 
their  home  town,  have  permitted  themselves  an 
illness  or  a  marriage.  Some  have  waited,  with 
the  mail  in  their  loads,  to  bury  the  dead.  'Such 
a  postman,  so  given  to  misadventures  and  clumsy 
ill-timed  tragedies,  was  once  late  to  the  tune  of 
eleven  days.  Who  remembers  what  delayed  him 
or  what  exquisite  reasons  he  gave?  And  who  of 
us  in  that  little  clearing  forgets  the  long  hours  of 
that  year  of  days? 

Another  postman,  of  an  extreme  beauty  and  an 
extreme  speed,  arrived  before  his  time.  There 
was  a  shouting  when  he  came.  All  the  inhabi 
tants  of  that  little  settlement  of  white  men  called 
to  each  other ;  the  four  or  five  of  them  filled  a  room 
of  a  bark  house  —  those  white  faces  that  were 
growing  daily  like  the  face  of  the  Asra,  'bleich 
und  bleicher, '  were  all  lit  by  the  flame  of  the  mail. 
In  all  that  little  commonwealth,  with  its  pioneer 
trades  and  its  pioneer  gardens  and  its  pioneer 
hospital  and  school  and  church — in  all  that  settle 
ment  all  the  busy  crude  wheels  of  industry  slack 
ened  and  stood  still  while  the  white  men  opened 
the  load  of  the  mail. 

'  Now  they  will  be  reading  the  books  from  home ! ' 

And  of  Ebenge,  that  young  carrier,  it  is  still  re 
membered  that  he  arrived  before  he  was  due. 
'Ah,  Ebenge/  you  still  say  to  him  from  time  to 
time,  'that  was  a  fine  walking  you  walked  that 

118 


EXILE  AND  POSTMAN 

walk  so  long  ago  when  you  slept  but  three  nights 
with  the  mail!' 

Another  postman,  never  to  be  forgotten  by 
those  exiles  whom  he  served,  never  came  at  all. 
This  was  a  boy,  too  young,  you  would  think,  for 
his  great  office.  The  letters  in  his  little  pack  were 
from  husbands  to  wives,  and  they  must  travel  a 
hundred  miles  of  forest-trail  in  time  of  war.  Not 
twenty  miles  they  traveled  when  the  postman, 
surrounded  by  black  soldiers,  was  called  to  de 
liver.  He  did  not  deliver.  He  could  not  give 
the  white  man's  letters  to  another  hand.  He 
said,  No,  he  could  not.  And  for  this  they  killed 
him.  That  young  body  tarried  forever  upon  the 
trail,  witnessing  in  that  interminable  delay  —  as 
Ebenge  had  witnessed  in  his  swift  coming  —  to 
the  sacred  element  in  the  mail. 

Here  is  the  king's  touch  for  the  king's  evil  - 
the  hand  of  the  postman  dropping  a  letter.  For 
this  the  victims  of  nostalgia  do  long  service.  For 
this  they  scribble,  in  their  lonely  and  various 
dwellings,  their  letters.  There  is  a  night,  in  those 
alien  settlements  all  about  the  world,  that  is  unlike 
other  nights.  It  is  the  night  before  the  mail  is 
closed.  The  lamp  is  full  of  oil  that  night,  and  the 
cup  of  coffee  is  at  the  elbow.  On  and  on,  while 
the  stars  march,  the  white  man's  hand  runs  upon 
the  page.  In  villages  where  there  are  no  street 
lamps,  the  white  man's  window  is  a  lamp  all  night 
of  the  night  before  the  mail.  From  steamers  that 
are  tied  to  trees  among  the  rushes,  in  rivers  that 

119 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

you  do  not  know,  the  officer  on  watch  may  look 
all  night  through  such  a  window  at  such  a  man 
writing,  writing  a  long,  long  letter  — •  the  beating 
heart  of  man,  articulate  in  all  that  heartless  dark 
ness. 

How  quick  a  seed,  you  would  say,  the  seed  in 
such  a  letter!  How  such  a  letter  must  bear,  some 
sixty-,  some  an  hundred-fold!  Yet  myself  I  saw 
this :  I  saw  the  harbor-master  of  Kabinda,  a  settle 
ment  of  white  men  on  the  west  coast  of  Africa, 
come  aboard  the  monthly  steamer  to  get  the  mail. 
He  was  an  old  Portuguese,  coffee-colored  in  his 
gray  linen  suit.  A  long  time  he  had  been  harbor 
master,  and  many  times  he  had  taken  the  brown 
bag  of  mail  ashore.  This  day,  when  he  lifted  his 
bag,  he  '  hefted  *  it :  the  lightness  of  it  in  his  hand 
made  him  smile.  Some  irony  that  was  the  fruit 
of  his  long  experience  of  exiles  and  their  letters 
made  that  old  indifferent  man  curl  the  lip.  I 
think  that  in  Kabinda  that  night  there  went  white 
men  hungry  to  bed. 

I  would  not  like  to  live  in  Kabinda,  where  the 
postman  is  so  old  and  so  wise.  These  white  post 
men  know  too  much ;  they  can  count  more  than 
ten.  And  other  things  they  know:  they  know  a 
thing  too  sad  to  tell.  Better  Ebenge,  who  ran  so 
swiftly  with  his  load,  or  little  Esam,  who  thought 
that  for  a  load  of  letters  some  would  even  dare  to 
die. 


The  Life  of  Adventure 

By  Edgar  J.  Goodspeed 

'ADVENTURES,'  said  the  gifted  Mr.  Disraeli,  'are 
to  the  adventurous. '  Stevenson  somewhere  rec 
ommends  the  conception  of  life  as  a  series  of  ad 
ventures,  each  morning  witnessing  as  it  were  a 
new  embarkation  upon  some  treasure-quest  or 
feat  of  arms.  And  I  have  often  observed  that  my 
adventurous  friends  have  a  knack  of  reporting 
with  all  the  flavor  of  genuine  adventures,  experi 
ences  which  upon  sober  reflection  seem  rather  to 
fade  into  the  light  of  common  day.  It  would  appear, 
therefore,  that  it  is  they  who  put  the  adventurous 
into  life,  rather  than  that  life  is  responsible. 

In  this  fact  lies  much  encouragement  for  one 
whose  life  seems  set  in  a  routine  of  commonplace ; 
who  lives  upon  a  decent  city  street,  where  even 
burglars  seldom  penetrate,  and  nothing  more  ex 
citing  than  automobile  collisions  ordinarily  hap 
pens.  These  last  are,  however,  of  a  gratifying 
frequency,  if  it  is  excitement  that  one  craves.  In 
deed,  we  have  latterly  come  to  a  weary  sense  of 
annoyance  when  the  familiar  crunch  informs  us 
that  two  motorists  have  simultaneously  claimed 

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the  right  of  way.  The  pious  duty  of  sweeping  up 
all  that  was  mortal  of  these  unfortunates  some 
times  becomes  really  distressing,  and  one  feels 
like  a  modern  Tobit,  keeping  watch  o'er  man's 
mortality. 

I  make  it  a  point  never  to  witness  these  dis 
tressing  occurrences ;  that  would  be  a  vocation  in 
itself.  Only  when  the  fatal  crash  is  heard  do  I 
emerge,  like  y-Esculapius  from  his  temple.  I  was  a 
witness  once,  but  only  in  a  burglary.  I  had  not, 
of  course,  seen  the  burglary,  but  I  could  remem 
ber  seeing  the  corpus  delicti  in  situ,  as  it  were,  later 
than  any  one  else;  and  the  proof  that  the  object 
had  existed  had,  of  course,  to  precede  the  evidence 
that  it  had  disappeared.  Such  is  the  logic  of  the 
law.  Twenty  several  times  I  accordingly  visited 
the  Halls  of  Justice,  and  twenty  several  mornings 
I  sacrificed  upon  the  altar  of  duty.  Months  wore 
on;  we  witnesses,  from  our  frequent  meetings, 
came  to  be  firm  friends.  We  talked  of  forming  a 
permanent  organization.  We  even  began  to  pro 
duce  a  literature,  though  all  that  I  now  remember 
of  it  is,  *  For  we're  trying  Johnny  Artzle  in  the 
morning. ' 

I  became  so  seasoned  an  habitue  of  the  court 
building  that  belated  witnesses  for  other  tribu 
nals,  on  reaching  the  witness-room,  would  rush  up 
to  me  and  explain  in  broken  English  that  they 
had  been  detained,  that  they  had  come  as  fast  as 
they  could  and  hoped  I  would  excuse  them ;  show- 

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ing  that  there  was  nothing  about  me  that  looked 
out  of  place  in  the  precincts  of  the  Criminal  Court. 

But,  with  all  this  assiduity,  we  did  not  convict 
our  burglar.  The  kindly  judge  reduced  his  bail, 
that  he  might  rejoin  his  family;  he  seized  the  op 
portunity  to  filch  some  golden  teeth,  which  a  pros 
perous  dentist  had  destined  for  his  fashionable 
clients,  and  this  irate  gentleman  thrust  in  his  case 
ahead  of  ours  (though  the  Statute  of  Limitations 
had  not  yet  run  against  us)  and  thus  snatched 
from  us  the  satisfaction  of  immuring  our  defend 
ant  in  his  deserved  dungeon. 

This  is  why  I  never  witness  motor  accidents. 
But  it  is  plain  that  even  this  unhappy  business 
may  take  on  the  glamour  of  romance  when  ap 
proached  from  the  point  of  view  of  adventure. 
The  other  morning,  when  the  familiar  crunch  in 
formed  us  that  we  were  again  to  function  as  first 
aids  to  broken  humanity,  I  rushed  into  the  street, 
to  see  a  large  limousine,  of  the  eight-passenger 
type  now  usual  at  obsequies,  resting  comfortably 
on  its  port  side  on  the  opposite  parkway.  What 
might  it  not  contain,  in  the  way  of  youth,  beauty, 
and  interest?  Yet  in  point  of  fact,  when  its  cargo 
had  been  laboriously  hoisted  up  through  the  main 
hatch,  which  was  ordinarily  its  right-hand  door, 
it  proved  to  be  nothing  very  romantic  after  all, 
and  we  gave  it  its  coffee  with  a  certain  vague 
sense  of  disappointment.  Some  people  really  are 
not  worthy  of  adventure,  and  it  is  a  great  pity 

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that  many  who  have  adventures  refuse  to  accept 
them  gratefully  in  an  adventurous  spirit. 

War  is,  of  course,  the  main  avenue  to  adven 
ture,  and  even  so  commonplace  an  affair  as  mili 
tary  drill  has,  at  least  in  its  early  stages,  adven 
turous  possibilities.  Our  corporal  (for  I  have  to 
admit  that  I  am  only  a  private  —  as  yet)  being 
one  day  kept  from  duty  by  a  seminar  on  Plato,  an 
expert  on  the  history  of  art,  excluding  that  of  war, 
was  set  over  us.  His  eagerness  exceeded  his  ex 
perience,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  he  led 
us  into  places  of  danger  previously  unsuspected. 
The  company,  though  with  the  gravest  misgiv 
ings,  was  called  upon  to  deploy  as  skirmishers, 
guide  left.  Placing  himself  at  our  head  and  cry 
ing,  *  Follow  me, '  our  gallant  leader  at  once  set  off 
at  a  double-quick  in  the  wrong  direction,  where  a 
lieutenant  much  out  of  breath  overtook  us,  cry 
ing,  'Hay,  corporal!  you  belong  at  the  other  end 
of  the  line !'  '  Follow  me, '  ordered  our  leader  un 
abashed  ;  and  we  double-quicked  to  the  other  end, 
there  to  meet  the  other  lieutenant,  with  the  cry, 
'Hay,  corporal!  you  belong  in  the  middle  of  the 
line!1 

But  one  of  our  most  inflexible  deans  occupied 
the  middle  with  his  squad,  and  his  conception  of 
military  duty  would  not  permit  him  to  budge 
without  orders.  Perhaps  he  remembered  the 
Marne  and  defeat  by  dislocation.  With  no  place 
to  go,  our  embarrassment  was  relieved  by  the  cap 
tain's  'As  you  were/  and  we  formed  again  in  our 

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THE  LIFE  OF  ADVENTURE 

familiar  column  of  squads.  But  in  the  slight  con 
fusion  which  I  have  to  admit  had  for  a  moment  pre 
vailed,  a  metathesis  had  taken  place:  from  being 
third  squad  we  had  become  fourth,  which  posi 
tion  carried  with  it  the  responsibility  of  leading 
the  second  platoon.  When  therefore  the  hoarse 
order,  '  Platoons  column  left, '  rang  out,  the  com 
pany  plodded  placidly  on  in  column  of  squads. 
We  seemed  to  have  lost  our  platoon  conscious 
ness.  Our  captain  was  annoyed ;  he  knew  that  he 
had  two  platoons,  but  they  declined  to  separate. 
Again  the  order  came,  without  effect. 

The  company  now  vaguely  felt  that  something 
was  wrong,  and  suppressed  cries  of  'Hay,  cor 
poral!  you're  pivot  man!'  'Hay,  second  platoon! 
wake  up ! '  came  to  us  from  front  and  rear.  With 
a  start,  our  guilty  squad  awoke  to  its  new  respon 
sibilities,  and  a  sense  of  the  eternal  watchfulness 
of  the  soldier's  life.  Qui  vive?  Qui  va? 

The  day  before  Marshal  J  off  re  arrived,  I  asked 
our  guide,  a  Plattsburg  veteran,  whether  the  Fac 
ulty  Company  was  to  participate  in  his  review 
of  the  battalion.  His  face  darkened  with  appre 
hension. 

'Say,'  said  he,  'that  would  be  a  mess!  He's 
reviewed  better  troops  than  we  are ! ' 

Never  more  desperate  ones,  though,  we  agreed. 
Like  all  great  soldiers,  our  officers  are  modest, 
even  about  their  handiwork.  We  of  the  ranks, 
however,  in  our  eagerness  feel  some  disappoint 
ment  that  we  cannot  exhibit  our  newly  won  pro- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ficiency,  even  to  General  Barry.  Why  keep  it  all 
for  Hindenburg? 

Battalion  drill  is  a  great  day  in  the  life  of  the 
military  neophyte,  and  our  favorite  evolution  is 
the  company  front  double-quick.  It  would  have 
been  a  pleasure  to  perform  this  for  the  Marshal  of 
France,  but  our  last  execution  of  the  manoeuvre 
made  our  officers  reluctant  to  exhibit  our  profi 
ciency  in  it  again  to  the  jealous  eye  of  authority. 
In  company  front,  we  spread  in  two  ranks  well 
across  the  field,  and  at  the  command  '  Double 
time!*  we  inaugurated  a  really  imposing  move 
ment,  before  the  reviewing  officer.  For  some  rea 
son  the  front  rank  of  the  first  squad  set  a  rapid 
pace,  which  the  whole  rank  nobly  strove  to  imi 
tate.  The  second  rank,  in  fear  of  being  distanced, 
came  thundering  up  behind,  and  the  first  rank, 
hearing  their  onset  close  upon  their  heels,  regularly 
ran  away.  In  consequence,  our  alignment,  usu 
ally  so  precise,  suffered  considerably;  and  it  began 
to  look  like  an  interscholastic  '  quarter  mile '  badly 
bunched  at  the  finish.  Reduced  to  the  more  pro 
fessorial  *  quick  time'  at  the  end  of  the  race,  we 
soon  recovered  our  breath  if  not  our  composure, 
and  it  was  remarked  that  in  the  rush  it  had  been 
the  Faculty  orators  who  led  the  field ;  both  things 
being  after  all  at  bottom  a  matter  of  wind. 

Before  we  were  dismissed  that  morning,  the  re 
viewing  officer  commented  favorably  on  our  drill, 
excepting  only  the  double-quick,  and  admonished 
us  to  try  to  keep  from  laughing.  Yet  is  it  not  well 

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THE  LIFE  OF  ADVENTURE 

known  from  the  writings  of  Captain  Beith  and 
others  that  the  British  Tommies  go  into  action 
laughing,  joking,  and  singing  music-hall  ballads? 

The  other  day  the  major's  usual  stirring  lecture 
on  the  art  of  war  was  replaced  by  that  threadbare 
faculty  device,  a  written  quiz.  The  first  question 
(I  believe  I  am  disclosing  no  military  secret  in 
telling)  was,  '  Name  the  textbook. '  The  answer 
was,  of  course,  I.D.R. ;  but  some  poor  fellows  who 
had  plunged  into  the  contents  without  first  mas 
tering  the  cover,  were  found  wanting. 

The  sociability  characteristic  of  convocation 
processions  naturally  tends  to  pervade  our  mili 
tary  marching  as  well.  At  battalion  the  other  day 
we  were  trying  to  catch  the  captain's  far-off  or 
ders  and  then  to  distinguish  which  of  several  whis 
tles  was  the  '  command  of  execution*  for  our  com 
pany,  when  a  late  arrival  dropped  into  the  vacant 
file  beside  me,  and  in  the  most  sociable  manner 
began  to  relate  an  experience  on  the  rifle  range  the 
Saturday  before.  This  extended  narrative  was 
much  interrupted,  for  I  lost  him  every  little  while 
under  the  stress  of  those  far-off  orders,  of  which  he 
appeared  quite  unconscious.  His  method  seemed 
to  be  to  wait  for  the  evolution  to  be  completed 
and  then  rejoin  me  wherever  I  might  be  and 
resume  his  parable,  although  he  did  occasionally 
complain  that  he  had  not  heard  the  order. 

Nevertheless,  we  learn  quickly.  The  other  day 
the  first  sergeant,  a  theologian  of  a  wholly  un 
suspected  bellicosity,  called  upon  the  squad  lead- 

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ers  to  report.  The  first  corporal  at  once  glibly 
cried  out,  '  All  present  or  accounted  for ' ;  where 
upon  each  successive  corporal,  confident  that 
none  of  his  men  had  been  killed  or  captured  since 
the  day  before,  joyfully  answered  with  the  same 
crisp  and  comprehensive  formula. 

For  all  our  attempts  at  militarism,  a  certain 
democratic  informality  still  lingers  among  us. 
The  captain  is  ordinarily  affectionately  addressed 
as  '  Henry.  '  Thus,  while  at  rest,  a  voice  is  heard 
from  the  rear  rank:  'Well,  Henry,  I  don't  un 
derstand  what  the  rear  rank  is  to  do  on  the  or 
der,  "Company  platoons  right."  Now  the  front 
rank  — ' 

'There's  no  such  command,'  answers  the  cap 
tain  patiently,  thus  closing  the  incident. 

The  captain  frequently  marches  backward,  so 
that  he  can  face  us  and  enjoy  the  swift  precision 
with  which  we  carry  out  his  orders.  The  other 
day  he  backed  into  the  east  bleacher  and  sat  down 
abruptly  on  the  bottom  step.  Luckily  he  gave  the 
command  to  halt,  or  in  our  blind  obedience  we 
should  probably  have  marched  right  over  him  up 
the  bleacher  and  off  the  back  of  it  into  space. 

I  shall  never  forget  our  first  review.  It  was 
with  no  little  reluctance  that  our  captain  con 
sented  to  our  participation  in  it.  He  seemed  to 
fear  that  we  might  shy  at  the  visiting  officers'  dec 
orations,  and  run  away.  Only  the  most  pro 
tracted  good  behavior  on  our  part  carried  the  day. 
After  marching  past  the  reviewing  party,  in  as 

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THE  LIFE  OF  ADVENTURE 

straight  a  company  front  as  we  could  exhibit,  we 
opened  our  ranks  for  inspection,  and  the  visiting 
colonel  prowled  about  among  us.  Just  before  he 
reached  our  company,  a  student  major,  in  a  frenzy 
of  apprehension,  came  up  and  gave  us  one  final 
adjuration  not  to  wiggle. 

The  colonel  —  a  fine  military  figure  —  marched 
swiftly  up  and  down  our  ranks,  stopping  now  and 
then  to  address  a  few  crisp  questions  to  one  or  an 
other  of  the  men.  He  seemed  to  select  those 
whose  soldierly  bearing  suggested  military  prom 
ise  ;  at  least  our  corporal  and  I  thought  so,  as  we 
were  the  men  he  spoke  to  in  our  part  of  the  line. 
Or  it  may  be  that  we  were  standing  so  like  statues 
that  he  wanted  to  satisfy  himself  that  those  mar 
ble  lips  could  speak.  Our  comrades  were  of  course 
eager  to  know  what  he  had  said,  and  we  had  later 
to  tell  them  that  he  had  imparted  to  us  important 
military  information  of  a  confidential  character; 
to  which  they  cynically  replied,  l  Yaas,  he  did! ' 

We  also  tactfully  let  it  be  known  that  the  colo 
nel  was  anxious  to  learn  whether  our  officers  were 
perfectly  satisfactory.  With  more  tractable  and 
appreciative  inquirers  we  entered  into  more  de 
tail.  He  had  asked  the  corporal  whether  he  had 
ever  shot  a  rifle:  corporal  blushingly  admitted 
that  he  had  once  shot  a  squirrel.  (Corporal  is  a 
football  hero,  and  accustomed  to  meet  the  enemy 
at  much  closer  quarters  than  rifle  range.  The 
rest  of  us,  on  the  other  hand,  are  publicists,  and  are 
deadliest  at  distances  of  from  500  to  5000  miles.) 

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Number  2  was  asked  if  he  could  cook,  and  claimed 
that  he  could.  Colonel  in  his  haste  did  not  think 
to  ask  Number  2  if  any  one  could  eat  what  he 
cooked,  or  he  would  have  learned  that  Number  2's 
cookery  is  best  suited  to  prisoners  of  war. 

Colonel  had  no  sooner  departed  on  his  inquisi 
torial  way  than  the  student  major  reappeared 
from  nowhere,  in  a  fearful  rage,  to  inquire  if  we 
couldn't  stand  still  even  for  two  minutes,  and  to 
complain  bitterly  that  during  the  inspection  one 
man  had  been  guilty  of  rubbing  his  nose.  Mur 
murs  of  disapproval  ran  through  the  ranks  at  the 
mention  of  this  wretched  offender,  who  was  prob 
ably  responsible  for  dragging  our  company  down 
to  a  tie  with  the  Law  School  for  third  place  out  of 
nine  in  the  honors  of  the  day. 

Captain  now  mercifully  ordered,  'Rest,'  and  a 
prodigious  and  concerted  sigh  rose  from  the  ranks. 
Each  man  abandoned  his  pokerlike  pose  of  '  Ten- 
shun'  for  an  attitude  of  infinite  dejection  and  fa 
tigue.  It  was  6:15  and  I  remarked  to  Number  2 
that  my  back  ached.  He  said  his  ached  clear 
through.  Our  former  corporal  asked  the  captain 
what  a  man  was  to  do  if  he  had  a  dinner  engage 
ment.  Captain  said  he  had  one,  but  guessed  we'd 
all  have  to  wait  for  orders  to  dismiss.  Corporal 
replied  that  he  had  n't  one,  but  just  wanted  to 
know.  If  one  is  to  rise  in  the  service,  one  should 
never  lose  an  opportunity  of  extracting  military 
information  from  one's  officers. 
We  have  not  yet  been  promoted  to  uniforms, 

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THE  LIFE  OF  ADVENTURE 

but  last  night  after  drill  we  were  informed  that 
while  we  could  not  be  provided  with  the  invisible 
olive-gray  now  in  fashion,  some  antiquated  khaki- 
colored  uniforms  of  1910  were  being  provided  for 
our  adornment.  This  arrangement  met  with  no 
objection.  The  fact  is,  we  are  not  wholly  unac 
customed  to  wearing  clothes  of  the  fashion  of 
1910,  and  furthermore,  while  we  have  no  desire 
to  be  conspicuous,  some  of  us  rather  shrink  from 
the  idea  of  wearing  invisible  clothing,  no  matter 
how  fashionable. 

So  full  of  adventure  is  military  life,  even  in  its 
most  elementary  form.  But  after  all  I  am  not 
primarily  a  soldier :  I  am  a  human  coral  insect  - 
that  is  to  say,  a  university  professor,  before  whom 
life  stretches,  as  Stevenson  said  of  another  class, 
'long  and  straight  and  dusty  to  the  grave/  I 
should  like  to  be  a  volcanic  being,  shouldering  up 
whole  islands  at  a  heave;  or  even,  if  that  could  not 
be,  perhaps  engulfing  one  or  two,  reluctantly  of 
course,  now  and  then.  Whereas  it  is  my  lot  in 
life  to  labor  long  and  obscurely  beneath  the  sur 
face,  to  make  the  intellectual  or  historical  struc 
ture  of  the  universe  solider  by  some  infinitesimal 
increment,  about  which  in  itself  nobody  except 
my  wife  and  me  particularly  cares. 

Sometimes,  however,  I  repine  a  little  and  wish 
that  I  were,  say,  a  porpoise,  splashing  gayly  along 
at  the  surface,  and  making  a  noise  in  the  world. 
Once  in  a  while,  when  I  am  going  to  sleep  (for 
even  a  coral  insect  must  sometimes  sleep),  dreams 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

float  through  my  mind  of  sudden  achievement, 
such  as  might  make  one  a  porpoise  or  better ;  and 
once  one  of  these  nearly  came  true.  Judge  how 
nearly.  I  was  wandering  through  a  half-subter 
ranean  Spanish  chapel,  fitly  set  with  huge  old 
missals,  dark  altar-pieces,  covered  stalls,  and 
quaint  curios.  Its  dim  recesses  beckoned  us  on 
from  one  rich  relic  to  another.  Interest  quick 
ened.  It  seemed  a  place  where  anything  might  be, 
awaiting  only  the  expert  eye  of  discovery.  I  had 
often  fancied  such  a  place,  and  finding  in  some 
dim  corner  of  it  a  certain  long-lost  work  of  litera 
ture  still  remembered  after  a  thousand  years'  ab 
sence  ;  somewhere  in  such  a  sleepy  treasure-house 
it  doubtless  lay,  enfolding  within  its  mouldering 
folios,  not  its  quaint  contents  only,  but  fame  and 
fortune  for  its  finder.  And  look !  Yonder,  under 
a  corner  staircase,  is  a  shelf  of  old  books,  large 
and  small.  You  approach  it  with  feigned  indiffer 
ence;  here,  if  anywhere,  will  be  your  prize,  a  man 
uscript  whose  unique  rarity  will  awaken  two  hemi 
spheres.  It  is  not  among  the  ponderous  tomes, 
of  course ;  so  you  take  them  down  first,  postpon 
ing  putting  fortune  to  the  decisive  touch.  But 
these  small  octavos  have  just  the  look  of  promise; 
they  are  thin,  too,  as  it  would  be;  and  what  pe 
riod  more  likely  for  it  than  that  sixteenth  century 
to  which  they  so  obviously  belong? 

Only  the  other  day,  a  friend  of  mine  who  lives 
on  our  reef,  and  on  a  branch  even  more  recondite 
than  mine,  found  among  the  uncatalogued  an- 

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THE  LIFE  OF  ADVENTURE 

tiques  of  an  American  museum  the  one  long-lost 
Tel-el-Amarna  tablet,  which  had  disappeared  al 
most  as  soon  as  it  was  discovered,  and  of  which  it 
was  only  known  that  it  was  probably  in  America. 
Thus  may  one  be  changed  in  a  moment  from  polyp 
to  porpoise,  and  be  translated  from  the  misty 
obscurity  of  the  bottom  to  the  stirring,  dazzling, 
delightful  surface  of  things. 

But  after  all,  the  plain  truth  is  that  adventure 
consists  less  in  the  experiences  one  actually  has 
than  in  the  indefatigable  expectancy  with  which 
one  awaits  them.  Indeed,  I  sometimes  fear  that 
people  must  be  divided  into  those  who  have  ad 
ventures  and  those  who  appreciate  them.  And 
between  the  two  the  affinity  for  adventure  is 
greater  treasure  than  the  experiencing  of  it.  If 
we  are  possessed  of  the  affinity,  adventure  itself 
is,  at  most,  just  round  the  corner  from  us.  This 
opens  the  life  of  adventure  to  all  who  crave  it. 
What  possibilities  lie  in  merely  crossing  a  street, 
for  example!  Some  one  remarked  the  other  day 
as  he  dodged  across  among  the  motor-cars,  '  Why 
not  take  a  chance  now  and  then  and  lead  a  real 
life  for  a  few  minutes?' 

I  therefore  recommend  the  life  of  adventure. 
It  conceives  each  day  as  a  fresh  enterprise,  full  of 
delightful  possibilities  and  promise,  and  so  pre 
serves  the  wine  of  life  from  growing  flat. 

Here  is  the  secret  of  youth.  The  moral  of  Mr. 
Disraeli's  epigram  is,  '  Be  adventurous. ' 


An  Indictment  of  Intercollegi 
ate  Athletics 

By  William  T.  Foster 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  athletics  provide  a  costly,  in 
jurious,  and  excessive  regime  of  physical  training 
for  a  few  students,  especially  those  who  need  it 
least,  instead  of  inexpensive,  healthful,  and  mod 
erate  exercise  for  all  students,  especially  those 
who  need  it  most. 

Athletics  are  conducted  either  for  education  or 
for  business.  t  The  old  distinction  between  ama 
teur  and  professional  athletics  is  of  little  use. 
The  real  problems  of  college  athletics  loom  large 
beside  the  considerations  that  define  our  use  of 
the  terms  ' prof essional'  and  'amateur.'  The 
aims  of  athletics  reveal  the  fact  that  the  impor 
tant  distinctions  are  between  athletics  conducted 
for  educational  purposes  and  athletics  conducted 
for  business  purposes. 

When  athletics  are  conducted  for  education  the 
aims  are  (i)  to  develop  all  the  students  and  fac 
ulty  physically  and  to  maintain  health;  (2)  to 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

promote  moderate  recreation  in  the  spirit  of  joy, 
and  as  a  preparation  jor  study  rather  than  as  a 
substitute  for  study;  and  (3)  to  form  habits  and 
inculcate  ideals  of  right  living.  When  athletics 
are  conducted  for  business,  the  aims  are  (i)  to 
win  games  —  to  defeat  another  person  or  group 
being  the  chief  end ;  (2)  to  make  money  —  as  it  is 
impossible  otherwise  to  carry  on  athletics  as  busi 
ness;  (3)  to  attain  individual  or  group  fame  and 
notoriety.  These  three  —  which  are  the  control 
ling  aims  of  intercollegiate  athletics  —  are  also  the 
aims  of  horse-racing,  prize-fighting,  and  profes 
sional  baseball. 

These  two  sets  of  aims  are  in  sharp  and  almost 
complete  conflict.  Roughly  speaking,  success  in 
attaining  the  aims  of  athletics  as  education  is  in 
inverse  proportion  to  success  in  attaining  the  aims 
of  athletics  as  business.  Intercollegiate  athletics 
to-day  are  for  business.  The  question  is  perti 
nent  whether  schools  and  colleges  should  promote 
athletics  as  business. 

Nearly  all  that  may  be  said  on  this  subject 
about  colleges  applies  to  secondary  schools.  The 
lower  schools  as  a  rule  tend  to  imitate  the  worst 
features  of  intercollegiate  athletics,  much  as  the 
young  people  of  fraternities,  in  their  '  social  func 
tions,'  tend  to  imitate  the  empty  lives  of  their 
elders  that  fill  the  weary  society  columns  of  the 
newspapers. 

If  the  objection  arises  that  intercollegiate  ath 
letics  have  educational  value,  there  is  no  one  to 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

--ft:  tfju^'    *•'  p  '^ 

deny  it.  '  Athletics  for  education '  and  '  athletics 
for  business'  are  general  terms,  used  throughout 
this  discussion  as  already  defined.  Exceptions 
there  may  be:  only  the  main  tendencies  are  here 
set  forth.  The  whole  discussion  is  based  on  my 
personal  observations  at  no  less  than  one  hun 
dred  universities  and  colleges  in  thirty-eight  states 
during  the  past  five  years. 

The  most  obvious  fact  is  that  our  system  of 
intercollegiate  athletics,  after  unbounded  oppor 
tunity  to  show  what  it  can  do  for  the  health,  rec 
reation,  and  character  of  all  our  students,  has 
proved  a  failure.  The  ideal  of  the  coach  is  exces 
sive  training  of  the  few:  he  best  attains  the  busi 
ness  ends  for  which  he  is  hired  by  the  neglect  of 
those  students  in  greatest  need  of  physical  train 
ing.  Our  present  system  encourages  most  stu 
dents  to  take  their  athletics  by  proxy.  When  we 
quote  with  approval  the  remark  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  that  Waterloo  was  won  on  the  play 
ing  grounds  of  Eton,  we  should  observe  that  he 
did  not  maintain  that  Waterloo  was  won  on  the 
grandstands  of  Eton. 

What  athletics  may  achieve  without  the  hin 
drance  of  intercollegiate  games  and  business  mo 
tives  is  suggested  by  the  experience  of  Reed  Col 
lege.  There  the  policy  of  athletics  for  everybody 
was  adopted  five  years  ago  before  there  were  any 
teachers,  students,  alumni,  or  traditions.  Last 
year  all  but  six  of  the  students  took  part  in  ath 
letics  in  the  spirit  of  sport  for  the  sake  of  health, 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

•& 
recreation,  and  development.    Sixty  per  cent  of 

the  men  of  the  college,  including  the  faculty,  took 
part  in  a  schedule  of  sixteen  baseball  games. 
Nearly  all  the  students,  men  and  women  alike, 
played  games  at  least  twice  a  week.  There  were 
series  of  contests  in  football,  baseball,  track,  ten 
nis,  volley-ball,  basket-ball,  and  other  out-of- 
door  sports.  All  of  this,  according  to  the  report 
of  the  athletic  association,  cost  the  students  an 
average  of  sixteen  cents  apiece.  No  money  for  :^^,,t 
coaches  and  trainers;  no  money  for  badges,  ban 
ners,  cups,  and  other  trinkets;  no  money  for 
training-tables  and  railroad  fares;  no  money  for 
grandstands,  rallies,  brass  bands,  and  advertising. 
Fortunately,  it  is  the  unnecessary  expenses  that 
heap  up  the  burdens  —  the  cost  of  athletics  as 
business.  The  economical  policy  is  athletics  for 
everybody  —  athletics  for  education. 

II 

Opposed  to  the  three  educational  aims  are  the 
aims  of  athletics  as  business  —  winning  games, 
making  money,  and  getting  advertised. 

Almost  invariably  the  arguments  of  students  in 
favor  of  intercollegiate  games  stress  the  business 
aims  and  ignore  all  others.  Win  games!  Increase 
the  gate-receipts!  Advertise  the  college!  These 
are  the  usual  slogans.  Thus  the  editors  of  one  col 
lege  paper  reprimand  the  faculty  for  even  hesitat 
ing  to  approve  a  trip  of  fifteen  hundred  miles  for 
a  single  game  of  football :  — 

137 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

^ " 

1  Contrary  to  the  expectations  of  the  students, 
the  matter  of  the  Occidental  football  game  for 
next  fall  has  not  been  acted  upon  as  yet.  That 
such  an  important  matter  as  this  has  not  received 
attention  so  far  from  the  Faculty  is  unfortunate. 
While  it  is  generally  believed  that  the  Faculty 
will  act  favorably  in  regard  to  letting  the  game  be 
scheduled,  it  is  understood  that  some  opposition 
has  developed  on  the  ground  that  such  a  long  trip 
would  keep  the  football  men  away  from  their 
classes  too  long  a  time. 

1  From  every  point  of  view,  there  seems  no  rea 
son  why  the  game  should  not  be  played.  To  state 
any  of  the  arguments  in  favor  of  the  offer  is  un 
necessary.  Every  one  knows  what  it  would  mean 
to  football  next  fall,  the  greater  interest  it  would 
mean  to  the  game,  the  incentive  it  would  prove 
to  every  football  man  to  work  to  become  one  of 
the  seventeen  men  to  take  the  trip,  the  advertis 
ing  it  would  give  to  the  college,  and,  perhaps 
most  important,  the  drawing  card  it  would  be  to 
bring  new  athletes  to  the  college  in  the  fall.  These 
points  and  others  are  too  well  known  to  need 
pointing  out  and  too  evident  to  need  proof. ' 

This  is  a  typical  football  argument.  It  at 
tempts  to  prove  the  necessity  of  the  proposed  trip 
by  showing  that  it  would  tend  to  perpetuate  the 
thing  the  value  of  which  is  under  dispute. 

In  like  vein  the  students  of  Cornell  complain 
because  the  faculty  did  not  grant  an  additional 
holiday  in  connection  with  the  Pennsylvania  foot- 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

ball  game.  It  is  the  familiar  cry:  'Support  the 
team!  Win  games!  Advertise  the  college!' 

'Our  friends,  the  professors,  will  perforce  hold 
forth  in  their  accustomed  cells  from  eight  till  one 
of  that  fair  morning.  The  benches,  no  doubt,  will 
derive  great  benefit  therefrom.  .  .  . 

'We  want  the  football  team  to  have  as  much 
support  as  possible.  The  Faculty  should  want  the 
football  team  to  have  as  much  support  as  possible. 
The  Faculty  should  foster  true  Cornell  spirit  when 
ever  it  can  honestly  do  so,  and  intercollegiate  ath 
letics  is  the  greatest  single  thing  that  unites  the 
different  colleges  into  Cornell  University.  A  vic 
tory  over  Penn  would  mean  a  lot  for  Cornell. ' 

After  all,  how  important  is  this  end  for  which 
such  sacrifices  are  made?  To  hear  the  yelling  of 
twenty  thousand  spectators,  one  might  suppose 
this  aim  to  be  the  only  one  of  great  importance 
in  the  life  of  the  university.  Yet  who  wins,  who 
loses,  is  a  matter  of  but  momentary  concern  to 
any  except  a  score  or  two  of  participants;  where 
as,  if  there  is  one  thing  that  should  characterize  a 
university,  it  is  its  cheerful  sacrifice  of  temporary 
for  permanent  gains,  —  in  Dr.  Eliot's  fine  phrase, 
its  devotion  to  the  durable  satisfactions  of  life. 

The  making  of  money,  through  intercollegiate 
athletics,  continues  a  curse,  not  only  to  institu 
tions,  but  as  well  to  individual  players.  Only 
childlike  innocence  or  willful  blindness  need  pre 
vent  American  colleges  from  perceiving  that  the 
rules  which  aim  to  maintain  athletics  on  what  is 

139 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

called  an  'amateur'  basis,  by  forbidding  players 
to  receive  pay  in  money,  are  worse  than  useless, 
for  while  failing  to  prevent  men  from  playing 
for  pay,  they  breed  deceit  and  hypocrisy.  There 
are  many  ways  of  paying  players  for  their  serv 
ices.  Only  one  of  these,  and  that  the  most  honor 
able,  is  condemned. 

There  are  many  subterranean  passages  leading 
to  every  preparatory  school  notable  for  its  ath 
letes.  By  such  routes,  coaches,  over-zealous 
alumni,  and  other  'friends'  of  a  college,  reach  the 
schoolboy  athlete  with  offers  beyond  the  scope  of 
eligibility  rules.  Sometimes  payments  are  made 
expressly  for  services  as  half-back,  or  short-stop, 
or  hurdler,  and  no  receipts  taken,  the  pay  con 
tinuing  as  long  as  the  player  helps  to  win  games. 
Sometimes  payments  take  a  more  insidious  and 
more  demoralizing  form.  The  star  athlete  is  ap 
pointed  steward  of  a  college  clubhouse  on  ample 
pay,  his  duties  being  to  sign  checks  once  a  month. 
Or  his  college  expenses  are  paid  in  return  for  the 
labor  of  opening  the  chapel  door,  or  ringing  the 
bell,  or  turning  out  the  lights. 

Athletes  may  be  paid  for  their  services  in  other 
ways  that  escape  the  notice  of  the  most  conscien 
tious  faculties  and  athletic  associations.  But 
there  are  hundreds  of  boys  who  know  that  they 
are  paid  to  win  games  and  keep  silent;  they  are 
hired  both  as  athletes  and  as  hypocrites. 

The  sporting  editor  of  one  of  the  leading  daily 
papers  said  recently,  '  It  is  well  known  that  the 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

Northwest  colleges  are  at  present  simply  out 
bidding  one  another  in  their  desire  to  get  the  best 
athletes.  Money  is  used  like  water.  It  is  a  mys 
tery  where  they  get  it,  but  they  do. ' 

So  common  is  the  practice  of  paying  athletes 
that  they  sometimes  apply  to  various  colleges  for 
bids.  While  I  was  acting  as  Registrar  of  Bowdoin 
College,  I  received  a  letter  from  a  man  asking 
how  much  we  would  guarantee  to  pay  him  for 
pitching  on  the  college  nine.  I  found  out  later 
that  he  had  registered  at  one  college,  pitched  a 
game  for  his  class  team,  left  his  trunk  at  a  second 
college  awaiting  their  terms,  and  finally  accepted 
the  offer  of  a  third  college,  where  he  played  '  ama 
teur  '  baseball  for  four  years  before  joining  one  of 
the  big  league  professional  teams. 

At  the  athletic  rallies  of  a  New  England  col 
lege,  a  loyal  alumnus  is  often  cheered  for  bringing 
so  many  star  athletes  to  the  college.  Officially, 
the  college  does  not  know  that  he  hires  men  to 
play  on  the  college  teams.  And  what  is  to  pre 
vent  a  graduate  of  the  college  or  any  other  person 
from  hiring  athletes?  All  but  futile  are  the  rules 
governing  professionalism.  Is  it  not  a  worthy 
act  to  enable  a  boy  to  go  to  college?  And  shall 
he  be  denied  such  aid  because  he  happens  to  be  an 
athlete?  No  eligibility  committee  knows  of  all 
these  benefactors  or  even  has  the  right  to  ques 
tion  their  motives.  But  the  objectionable  mo 
tives  themselves  can  be  eliminated  by  one  act  — 
the  abolition  of  intercollegiate  athletics.  With 

141 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

j 

the  subordination  of  winning  games  as  the  chief 

end  in  athletics,  falls  also  the  money-making  aim 
and  its  attendant  evils. 

All  the  serious  evils  of  college  athletics  centre 
about  the  gate-receipts,  the  grandstand,  and  the 
paid  coach.  Yet  the  aim  of  nearly  every  college 
appears  to  be  to  fasten  these  evils  upon  the  in 
stitution  by  means  of  a  costly  concrete  stadium  or 
bowl,  and  by  means  of  more  and  more  money  for 
coaches.  When  the  alumni  come  forward  to  '  sup 
port  their  team,'  they  usually  make  matters 
worse.  Typical  of  their  attitude  is  a  letter  signed 
in  Philadelphia  last  fall  by  some  thirty  graduates 
of  a  small  college :  — 

'The  team  has  just  closed  the  most  disastrous 
season  in  its  history.  .  .  .  The  alumni  will  coop 
erate  cheerfully  with  the  undergraduates  in  in 
creasing  the  football  levy.  It  only  remains,  then, 
to  initiate  a  campaign  for  procuring  the  money. 
.  .  .  We  must  depart  from  our  time-worn  prece 
dents  and  give  more  money  for  the  coaches!  Alumni 
are  tired  of  reading  the  accounts  of  useless  defeats !' 

The  extent  to  which  interest  in  athletics  is 
deadened  by  paid  coaches  was  shown  last  spring, 
when  a  track  team  from  one  university,  after 
traveling  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  —  at 
the  expense  of  the  student  body  —  to  compete 
with  the  team  of  another  institution,  took  off  their 
running  shoes  and  went  home  because  the  coaches 
could  not  agree  on  the  number  of  men  who  should 
participate  in  the  games.  Could  there  be  a  more 

142 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

abject  sacrifice  of  the  educational  purposes  of  ath 
letics?  Consider  the  spectacle.  A  glorious  after 
noon  in  spring,  a  perfect  playground,  complete 
equipment  in  readiness,  two  score  of  eager  youth 
in  need  of  the  health  and  recreation  that  come 
from  sport  pursued  in  the  fine  spirit  of  sport. 
Could  anything  keep  them  from  playing?  Noth 
ing  but  the  spirit  of  modern  American  intercol 
legiate  athletics  and  the  embodiment  of  that  spirit, 
the  paid  coach,  who  knows  that  there  is  but  one 
crime  that  he  can  commit  —  that  of  losing  a  con 
test. 

The  athletic  policy  of  many  an  institution  is 
determined  by  a  commercial  aim,  the  supposed 
needs  of  advertising,  much  as  the  utterances  of 
many  a  newspaper  are  dictated  by  the  business 
manager.  But  does  the  advertising  gained 
through  intercollegiate  athletics  injure  or  aid  a 
college?  At  one  railroad  station  I  was  greeted  by 
a  real-estate  agent  who  offered  to  sell  me  'on 
easy  terms  a  lot  in  the  most  beautiful  and  rapidly 
growing  city  in  America. '  (Thus  do  I  safely  cover 
its  identity.)  Among  the  attractions,  he  men 
tioned  the  local  college.  He  was  proud  of  it;  he 
said  it  had  the  best  baseball  team  in  the  state. 
Apart  from  that  he  had  not  an  intelligent  idea 
about  the  institution,  or  any  desire  for  ideas.  The 
only  building  he  had  visited  was  the  grandstand. 
He  could  not  name  a  member  of  the  faculty  or  a 
course  of  instruction.  College  advertising  which 

143 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

gets  no  further  than  this  is  paid  for  at  exorbitant 
rates. 

The  people  of  Tacoma  discovered  recently  that 
college  athletics  conducted  as  a  business  are  too 
costly.  They  brought  college  students  1400  miles 
to  play  a  football  game  at  Tacoma  on  Thanksgiv 
ing  Day  for  the  benefit  of  the  Belgian  refugees. 
The  charitable  object  of  the  game  was  widely  ad 
vertised  and  there  was  a  large  attendance.  After 
they  had  paid  the  expenses  of  the  'amateur' 
teams,  the  coaches,  and  the  advertising,  they  an 
nounced  that  there  was  nothing  left  for  the  Bel 
gians. 

A  writer  in  the  North  American  Review  tries  to 
justify  the  time  spent  by  college  boys  in  managing 
athletic  teams  on  the  plea  that  it  is  good  training 
for  business.  He  gives  testimony  to  this  effect 
from  a  graduate  of  two  years'  standing  l  engaged 
in  the  wholesale  coal  business  in  one  of  the  large 
New  York  towns. '  Following  the  usual  custom, 
this  young  graduate  returns  to  his  college  and 
gives  the  admiring  undergraduates  the  benefit  of 
his  wisdom,  lest  they  be  corrupted  by  the  quaint 
notions  of  impractical  professors.  He  has  them 
guess  what  part  of  his  college  work  has  proved 
of  greatest  use ;  then  he  assures  them  that  his  best 
training  came  as  manager  of  the  baseball  team. 
Such  is  the  mature  judgment  of  the  coal-dealer. 
And  such  is  the  advice  of  alumni  which  makes 
undergraduates  resolve  anew  not  to  allow  their 
studies  to  interfere  with  their  college  education, 

144 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

But  some  people  raise  the  question  why  a  boy 
should  be  maintained  in  college  for  four  years,  at 
a  great  cost  to  society  and  to  his  parents,  in  order 
that  he  may  gain  a  little  business  experience  when 
he  could  gain  so  much  more  by  earning  his  living. 

The  conflicts  frequently  arising  between  facul- 
ties  and  students  over  questions  of  intercollegiate 
athletics  are  the  natural  outcome  of  the  independ 
ent  control  of  a  powerful  agency  with  three  chief 
aims  —  winning  games,  making  money,  and  get 
ting  advertised  —  which  are  antagonistic  to  the 
chief  legitimate  ambitions  of  a  university  faculty. 
No  self-respecting  head  of  a  department  of  psy 
chology  would  tolerate  the  presence  in  the  univer 
sity  of  persons  working  in  his  field,  in  no  way  sub 
ject  to  him  and  with  aims  subversive  of  those  of 
the  department.  No  professor  of  physical  edu 
cation  should  tolerate  a  similar  condition  in  his 
department.  It  is  one  of  the  hopeful  signs  in 
America  that  several  of  the  men  best  qualified  to 
conduct  athletics  as  education  have  declined  to 
consider  university  positions,  unless  they  could 
have  control  of  students,  teams,  coaches,  alumni 
committees,  grandstands,  fields,  finances,  and 
everything  else  necessary  to  rescue  athletics 
from  the  clutches  of  commercialism. 

I  have  read  a  letter  from  one  of  the  ablest  teach 
ers  in  America,  declining  to  accept  a  certain  uni 
versity  position  under  the  usual  conditions,  but 
outlining  a  plan  whereby,  as  the  real  head  of  the 
department  of  physical  education,  he  might  be- 

145 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

gin  a  new  chapter  in  the  history  of  American  ath 
letics.  His  plan  was  rejected,  not  because  it  had 
any  defects  as  a  system  of  education,  but  solely 
because  it  would  cause  a  probable  decline  in  vic 
tories,  gate-receipts,  and  newspaper  space.  That 
university  continued  the  traditional  dual  contest 
of  coaches  and  physical  directors  with  their  con 
flicting  ideals.  Recently  I  received  a  letter  from 
the  professor  of  physical  education  who  did  ac 
cept  the  position,  himself  one  of  the  ablest  ath 
letes  among  its  graduates,  declaring  that  he  would 
no  longer  attempt  the  impossible,  in  an  institution 
which  deliberately  prostituted  athletics  for  com 
mercial  ends. 

We  hear  much  about  the  value  of  intercollegiate 
games  for  the  '  tired  business  man '  who  needs  to 
get  out  of  doors  and  watch  a  sport  that  will  make 
him  forget  his  troubles.  It  is  true  that  for  him  a 
game  of  baseball  may  be  a  therapeutic  spectacle. 
The  question  is  whether  institutions  of  learning 
should  conduct  their  athletics  —  or  any  other  de 
partment  —  for  the  benefit  of  spectators.  Doubt 
less  university  courses  in  history  could  provide 
recreation  for  the  general  public  and  make  money, 
if  instruction  were  given  wholly  by  means  of 
motion-pictures.  But  such  courses  would  hardly 
satisfy  the  needs  of  all  students.  Is  it  less  impor 
tant  that  departments  of  physical  education 
should  be  conducted  primarily  for  all  students 
rather  than  for  spectators?  We  do  not  insist 
that  banks,  railroads,  factories,  department  stores, 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

and  legislatures  jeopardize  their  main  functions 
in  order  to  provide  recreation  for  the  tired  busi 
ness  men.  Universities  are  institutions  of  equal 
importance  to  society,  in  so  far  as  they  attend  to 
their  main  purposes.  Athletics  for  the  benefit  of 
the  grandstand  must  be  conducted  as  business; 
athletics  for  the  benefit  of  students  must  be  con 
ducted  as  education. 

'  adi  -  - 
ill 

It  is  when  we  rightly  estimate  the  possibilities 
of  athletics  as  education  that  the  present  tyranny 
of  athletics  as  business  becomes  intolerable.  Is  it 
not  an  anomaly  that  those  in  charge  of  higher  in 
stitutions  of  learning  should  leave  athletic  ac 
tivities,  which  are  of  such  great  potential  educa 
tional  value  for  all  students,  chiefly  under  the 
control  of  students,  alumni,  coaches,  newspapers, 
and  spectators?  Usually  the  coach  is  engaged  by 
the  students,  paid  for  by  the  students,  and  respon 
sible  only  to  them.  He  is  not  a  member  of  the 
faculty  or  responsible  to  the  faculty.  The  faculty 
have  charge  of  the  college  as  an  educational  in 
stitution;  athletics  is  for  business  and  therefore 
separately  controlled.  Why  not  abandon  faculty 
direction  of  Latin?  Students,  alumni,  and  news 
papers  are  as  well  qualified  to  elect  a  professor  of 
Latin  and  administer  the  department  in  the  in 
terests  of  education,  as  they  are  to  elect  coaches 
and  administer  athletics  in  the  interests  of  educa 
tion. 

147 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

A  few  of  the  more  notable  coaches  of  the  coun 
try  are  aware  of  the  possibilities  of  athletics  con 
trolled  by  the  faculty  for  educational  purposes. 
Mr.  Courtney,  the  Cornell  coach,  spoke  to  the 
point  when  he  said,  - 

1  If  athletics  are  not  a  good  thing,  they  ought  to 
be  abolished.  If  they  are  a  good  thing  for  the 
boys,  it  would  seem  to  me  wise  for  the  university 
to  take  over  and  control  absolutely  every  branch 
of  sport ;  do  away  with  this  boy  management ;  stop 
this  foolish  squandering  of  money,  and  see  that 
the  athletics  of  the  University  are  run  in  a  ra 
tional  way.' 

Next  to  the  physical  development  and  the  main 
tenance  of  the  health  of  all  the  students  and  teach 
ers  of  an  institution,  the  main  purpose  of  athletics 
as  education  is  to  provide  recreation  as  a  prepara 
tion  for  study  rather  thanasasubstitute  for  study. 
But,  intercollegiate  athletics  having  won  and  re 
tained  unquestioned  supremacy  in  our  colleges, 
students  do  not  tolerate  the  idea  of  a  conflicting 
interest. 

Even  the  nights  preceding  the  great  contests 
must  be  free  from  the  interference  of  intellectual 
concerns.  An  editorial  in  one  of  our  college  week 
lies  makes  this  point  clear.  If  a  member  of  the 
faculty  ventured  to  put  the  matter  so  extremely, 
he  would  be  charged  with  exaggeration.  But  in 
this  paper  the  students  naively  present  their  con 
viction  that  even  the  most  signal  opportunities 
for  enjoying  literature  must  be  sacrificed  by  the 

148 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

entire  student  body  in  order  that  they  may  get  to 
gether  and  yell  in  preparation  for  their  function 
of  sitting  in  the  grandstand.  In  this  case  the  con 
flicting  interest  appeared  in  no  less  a  person  than 
Alfred  Noyes.  For  a  geographically  isolated  com 
munity  to  hear  the  poet  was  an  opportunity  of  a 
college  lifetime.  Yet  the  students  wrote  as  fol 
lows  :' — 

'THE  RALLY  vs.  NOYES 

'Returning  alumni  this  year  were  somewhat 
surprised  to  find  the  Hall  used  for  a  lecture  on  the 
eve  of  our  great  gridiron  struggle,  and  some  were 
very  much  disappointed.  The  student  body  was 
only  partially  reconciled  to  the  situation  and  was 
represented  in  great  part  by  Freshmen  [who  were 
required  to  attend].' 

The  relative  importance  of  intercollegiate  ath 
letics  and  other  college  affairs,  in  the  minds  of 
students,  is  indicated  by  student  publications. 
There  is  no  more  tangible  scale  for  measuring  the 
interests  of  college  youth  than  the  papers  which 
they  edit  for  their  own  satisfaction,  unrestrained 
by  the  faculty. 

Let  us  take  two  of  the  worthiest  colleges  as  ex 
amples.  The  Bowdoin  College  Orient,  a  weekly 
publication,  is  typical.  For  the  first  nine  weeks 
of  the  academic  year  1914-15,  the  Orient  gave 
450  inches  to  intercollegiate  athletics.  For  the 
same  period,  it  devoted  six  inches  to  art,  ten 
inches  to  social  service,  thirteen  inches  to  music, 

149 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

and  twelve  inches  to  debating.  Judging  from  this 
free  expression,  the  students  rate  the  interests  of 
intercollegiate  athletics  nearly  three  times  as 
high  as  the  combined  interests  of  art,  music,  relig 
ion,  philosophy,  social  service,  literature,  debat 
ing,  the  curriculum,  and  the  faculty.  Second  in 
importance  to  intercollegiate  athletics,  valued  at 
450  inches,  are  dances  and  fraternities,  valued  at 
78  inches. 

Another  possible  measure  of  the  student's  in 
terest  is  found  in  Harvard  of  Today  from  an  Under 
graduate  Point  of  View,  published  in  1913  by  the 
Harvard  Federation  of  Territorial  Clubs.  The 
book  gives  to  athletics  ten  pages;  to  the  clubs, 
six  pages ;  to  debating,  five  lines  —  and  that  stu 
dent  activity  requires  sustained  thinking  and  is 
most  closely  correlated  with  the  curriculum.  The 
faculty  escapes  without  mention.  *  From  an  un 
dergraduate  point  of  view '  the  faculty  appears  to 
be  an  incumbrance  upon  the  joys  of  college  life. 

These  publications  appear  to  be  fair  represen 
tatives  of  their  class.  It  is  probable,  furthermore, 
that  the  relative  attention  given  by  the  student 
papers  to  intellectual  interests  is  a  criterion  of  the 
conversation  of  students. 

Not  long  ago,  I  spent  some  time  with  the  grad 
uate  students  at  an  Eastern  university.  Their 
conversation  at  dinner  gave  no  evidence  of  com 
mon  intellectual  interests.  They  appeared  to  talk 
of  little  but  football  games. 

On  a  visit  to  a  Southern  state  university,  I 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

found  the  women's  dormitory  in  confusion.  The 
matron  excused  the  noise  and  disorder  on  the 
ground  that  a  big  football  game  was  pending  and 
it  seemed  impossible  for  the  girls  to  think  of  any 
thing  else. 

'The  big  game  comes  to-morrow?'  I  asked. 

'Oh,  no,  next  week,'  she  said. 

Last  spring,  at  a  large  university  on  the  Pacific 
Coast,  I  met  one  young  woman  of  the  freshman 
class  who  had  already  been  to  thirty-one  dances 
that  year.  At  a  state  university  of  the  Middle 
West,  I  found  that  the  students  had  decided  to 
have  their  big  football  game  on  Friday  instead  of 
Saturday,  in  order  to  wrench  one  more  day  from 
the  loose  grip  of  the  curriculum.  When  the  fac 
ulty  protested,  the  students  painted  on  the  walks, 
'  Friday  is  a  holiday '  -  and  it  was. 

Intellectual  enthusiasm  is  rare  in  American  col 
leges,  and  is  likely  to  be  rarer  still  if  social  and 
athletic  affairs  continue  to  overshadow  all  other 
interests.  Their  dominance  has  given  many  a 
college  faculty  its  characteristic  attitude  in  mat 
ters  of  government.  They  assume  that  boys  and 
girls  will  come  to  college  for  anything  but  studies. 
They  tell  new  students  just  how  many  lectures  in 
each  course  they  may  escape.  A  penalty  of  un 
satisfactory  work  is  the  obligation  to  attend  all 
the  meetings  on  their  schedule,  and  the  usual  re 
ward  for  faithful  conduct  is  the  privilege  of  '  cut 
ting'  more  lectures  without  a  summons  from  the 
dean.  Always  the  aim  of  students  appears  to  be 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

to  escape  as  much  as  possible  of  the  college  life 
provided  by  the  faculty,  in  order  to  indulge  in 
more  of  the  college  life  provided  by  themselves. 
Their  inventive  powers  are  marvelous ;  they  bring 
forth  an  endless  procession  of  devices  for  evading 
the  opportunities  for  the  sake  of  which  (accord 
ing  to  old-fashioned  notions)  students  seek  ad 
mission  to  college.  The  complacent  acceptance 
of  this  condition  by  college  faculties  —  the  perva 
sive  assumption  that  students  have  no  genuine 
intellectual  enthusiasm  —  tends  to  stagnation. 
In  the  realm  of  thought  some  appear  to  have  dis 
covered  the  secret  of  petrified  motion. 

The  pronounced  tendencies  in  higher  education 
aggravate  the  disease.  Feeble  palliatives  are  re 
sorted  to  from  time  to  time,  —  the  baseball  sched 
ule  in  one  college,  after  six  hours  of  debate  by  the 
faculty,  was  cut  down  from  twenty-four  games  to 
twenty-two,  —  but  the  bold  and  necessary  sur 
geon  seldom  gets  in  his  good  work.  When  he  does 
operate,  he  is  hung  in  effigy  or  elected  President 
of  the  United  States. 

Concerning  the  policy  of  no  intercollegiate 
games  at  Clark  College,  President  Sanford  says: 
'  Our  experience  with  this  plan  has  been  absolutely 
satisfactory  and  no  change  of  policy  would  be 
considered.  Doubtless  some  of  the  less  intellec 
tually  serious  among  the  students  might  like  to 
see  intercollegiate  sports  introduced.  It  is  gener 
ally  understood  that  in  a  three-year  college  there 
is  not  time  for  such  extras. '  The  faculty  appear 

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INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

to  be  unanimously  in  favor  of  no  intercollegiate 
games,  since  the  course  at  Clark  College  takes 
only  three  years.  Intercollegiate  contests  appear 
to  be  ruled  out  chiefly  on  the  ground  that,  in  a 
three-year  course,  students  cannot  afford  to  waste 
time.  But  why  is  it  worse  for  a  young  man  to 
waste  parts  of  three  years  of  his  student  life  than 
to  waste  parts  of  four  years  of  it? 

The  educational  effect  of  our  exaggerated  em 
phasis  on  intercollegiate  athletics  is  shown  in  the  ^ 
attitude  of  alumni.  It  is  difficult  to  arouse  the 
interest  of  a  large  proportion  of  graduates  in  any 
thing  else.  At  one  of  the  best  of  our  small  col 
leges,  in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  I  saw  a  massive 
concrete  grandstand.  This  valiant  emulation  of 
the  Harvard  stadium  seemed  to  me  to  typify  the 
indifference  of  alumni  to  the  crying  needs  of  their 
alma  mater.  For  these  graduates  who  contrib 
uted  costly  concrete  seats,  to  be  used  by  the  stu 
dent  body  in  lieu  of  exercise,  showed  no  concern 
over  the  fact  that  the  college  was  worrying  along 
with  scientific  laboratories  inferior  to  those  of  the 
majority  of  modern  high  schools.  'What  could 
I  do? '  the  president  asked.  'They  would  give  the 
stadium,  and  they  would  not  give  the  laboratories. ' 

IV 

There  have  been  numerous  attempts  to  prove 
that  intercollegiate  athletics  are  not  detrimental  to 
scholarship  by  showing  that  athletes  receive  higher 
marks  than  other  students.  Such  arguments  are 

153 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

beside  the  point.  Though  we  take  no  account  of 
the  weak-kneed  indulgence  to  athletes  in  institu 
tions  where  winning  games  is  the  dominant  inter 
est,  and  of  the  special  coaching  in  their  studies  pro 
vided  for  them  because  they  are  on  the  teams, 
we  must  take  account  of  the  fact  that  wherever 
the  student  body  regards  playing  on  intercolle 
giate  teams  as  the  supreme  expression  of  loyalty, 
the  men  of  greatest  physical  and  mental  strength 
are  more  likely  than  the  others  to  go  out  for  the 
teams,  and  these  are  the  very  men  of  whom  we 
rightly  expect  greatest  proficiency  in  scholarship. 
That  they  do  not  as  a  group  show  notable  leader 
ship  in  intellectual  activities  seems  due  to  the  ex 
cessive  physical  training  which,  at  certain  seasons, 
they  substitute  for  study. 

But  this  is  not  the  main  point.  A  large  college 
might  be  willing  to  sacrifice  the  scholarship  of  a 
score  of  students,  if  that  were  all.  The  chief 
charge  against  intercollegiate  athletics  is  their 
demoralizing  effect  on  the  scholarship  of  the  en 
tire  institution.  The  weaklings  who  have  not 
grit  enough  to  stand  up  on  the  gridiron  and  be 
tackled  talk  interminably  about  the  latest  game 
and  the  chances  of  winning  the  next  one.  They 
spend  their  hours  in  cheering  the  football  hero, 
and  their  money  in  betting  on  him.  The  man  of 
highest  achievement  in  scholarship  they  either 
ignore  or  condemn  with  unpleasant  epithets. 

Further  hindrances  to  scholarship  are  found  in 
the  periodic  absences  of  the  teams.  It  is  said  that 

154 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

athletes  are  required  to  make  up  the  work  they 
miss  during  their  trips,  but  is  not  this  one  of  the 
naive  ways  whereby  faculties  deceive  themselves? 
They  are  faced  with  this  dilemma.  Either  the 
work  of  a  given  week  in  their  courses  is  so  sub 
stantial,  and  their  own  contribution  to  the  work 
so  great,  that  students  cannot  possibly  miss  it, 
and  'make  it  up'  while  meeting  the  equally  great 
demands  of  the  following  week,  or  else  the  work 
of  all  the  students  is  so  easy  that  the  athletes  on 
a  week's  absence  do  not  miss  much.  What  ac 
tually  happens,  year  in  and  year  out,  is  that  the 
standards  of  scholarship  of  the  entire  institution 
are  lowered  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  intercol 
legiate  athletics. 

To  what  an  illogical  position  we  are  driven  by 
our  fetish  worship  of  college  '  amateur  athletics ' ! 
We  especially  provide  the  summer  vacation  as 
a  period  for  play  and  recreation,  and  as  a  time 
when  a  majority  of  students  must  earn  a  part  of 
the  expenses  of  the  college  year.  For  these  pur 
poses  we  suspend  all  classes.  Yet  the  student  who 
uses  this  vacation  to  play  ball  and  thereby  earn 
some  money  must  either  lie  about  it  or  be  con 
demned  to  outer  darkness.  There  are  no  inter 
collegiate  athletics  for  him ;  he  has  become  a  '  pro 
fessional.'  It  matters  not  how  fine  his  ideals  of 
sport  may  be,  how  strong  his  character,  or  how 
high  his  scholarship.  These  considerations  are 
ignored.  The  honors  all  go  to  the  athlete  who  ! 
neglects  his  studies  in  order  to  make  games  his 

155 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

supreme  interest  during  that  part  of  the  twelve 
months  which  is  specifically  set  apart  for  studies. 

Far  more  sensible  would  be  an  arrangement 
whereby,  if  we  must  have  intercollegiate  athletics 
at  all,  the  games  could  be  scheduled  in  vacation 
periods,  and  a  part  of  the  gate-receipts,  if  we 
must  have  them  at  all,  could  be  used  for  the  neces 
sary  living  expenses  of  worthy  students,  instead 
of  being  squandered,  as  much  of  that  money  is 
squandered  to-day.  That  this  wrill  seem  a  pre 
posterous  plan  to  those  who  are  caught  in  the 
maelstrom  of  the  present  collegiate  system  need 
not  surprise  us.  An  accurate  record  of  the  his 
tory  of  intercollegiate  athletics  shows  that,  year 
in  and  year  out,  the  arrangements  desired  by  stu 
dents  are  those  that  interfere  most  seriously  w^ith 
study  during  the  days  especially  intended  for 
study. 

The  maelstrom  of  college  athletics!  That 
would  not  seem  too  strong  a  term  if  we  could  view 
the  age  in  which  we  live  in  right  perspective  — 
an  age  so  unbalanced  nervously  that  it  demands 
perpetual  excitement.  We  have  fallen  into  a 
vicious  circle:  the  excesses  of  excitement  create 
a  pathological  nervous  condition  which  craves 
greater  excesses.  The  advertisement  of  a  head- 
on  collision  of  two  locomotives  is  said  to  have 
drawn  the  largest  crowd  in  the  history  of  mod 
ern  'sport';  next  in  attractiveness  is  an  intercol 
legiate  football  game.  It  is  unfortunate  that  our 
universities,  which  should  serve  as  balancing 

156 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

forces,  —  which  should  inculcate  the  ideal  of 
sport  as  a  counterpoise  to  an  overwrought  civil 
ization,  —  are  actually  making  conditions  worse 
through  cultivating,  by  means  of  athletics  as  a 
business,  that  passion  for  excitement  which 
makes  sustained  thinking  impossible  and  which  is 
elsewhere  kept  at  fever  heat  by  prize-fights,  bull 
fights,  and  blood-curdling  motion  pictures. 

v 

But  even  if  intercollegiate  games  are  detrimen 
tal  to  the  interests  of  scholarship,  is  not  the  col 
lege  spirit  they  create  worth  all  they  cost?  Per 
haps  so.  A  university  is  more  than  a  curriculum 
and  a  campus.  It  is  more  than  the  most  elabo 
rate  student  annual  can  depict.  Even  in  Car- 
lyle's  day,  it  was  more  than  he  called  it:  a  true 
university  was  never  a  mere  *  collection  of  books. ' 
It  is  the  spirit  that  giveth  life,  and  *  college  spirit* 
is  certainly  a  name  to  conjure  with.  The  first 
question  is  what  we  mean  by  college  spirit.  A 
student  may  throw  his  hat  in  the  air,  grab  a  mega 
phone,  give  '  three  long  rahs,'  go  through  the 
gymnastics  of  a  cheer-leader,  —  putting  the  most 
ingenious  mechanical  toys  to  shame,  —  and  yet 
leave  some  doubt  whether  he  has  adequately  de 
fined  college  spirit. 

What  is  this  college  spirit  that  hovers  over  the 
paid  coach  and  his  grandstand  —  this  'indefin 
able  something,'  as  one  writer  calls  it,  'which  is 
fanned  into  a  bright  flame  by  intercollegiate  ath- 

157 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

letics'?  Shall  we  judge  the  spirit  by  its  manifes 
tations  in  an  institution  famed  above  all  else  for 
its  winning  teams  and  its  college  spirit?  In  such 
an  institution,  not  long  ago,  every  student  was 
cudgeled  or  cajoled  into  *  supporting  the  team,' 
and  many  a  callow  youth  acted  as  though  he 
thought  he  had  reached  the  heights  of  self-sacri 
fice  when  he  sat  for  hours  on  the  grandstand, 
watching  practice,  puffing  innumerable  cigarettes, 
and  laying  up  a  stock  of  canned  enthusiasm  for 
the  big  game.  A  student  who  would  not  support 
his  team  by  betting  on  it  was  regarded  as  defi 
cient  in  spirit.  Every  intercollegiate  game  was 
the  occasion  of  general  neglect  of  college  courses. 
If  the  game  was  at  a  neighboring  city,  the  class 
rooms  were  half  empty  for  two  days ;  but  the  bar 
rooms  of  that  city  were  not  empty,  and  worse 
places  regularly  doubled  their  rates  on  the  night 
of  a  big  game.  Some  of  the  most  enthusiastic 
supporters  of  the  team  went  to  jail  for  disturbing 
the  peace.  If  the  contest  took  place  at  home,  re 
turning  alumni  filled  the  fraternity  houses  and 
celebrated  with  general  drunkenness.  'An  inde 
finable  something'  -  -  consisting  of  college  prop 
erty  and  that  of  private  citizens  —  was  '  fanned 
into  a  bright  flame '  in  celebration  of  the  victory. 
Following  this  came  the  spectacle  of  young  men 
parading  the  streets  in  nightshirts.  For  residents 
of  the  town  who  did  not  enjoy  this  particular  kind 
of  spirit,  the  night  was  made  hideous  by  the 
noises  of  revelry.  All  this  and  much  more  was 

158 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

tolerated  for  years  on  the  assumption  that  stu 
dents,  imbued  with  college  spirit,  should  not  be 
subjected  to  the  Jaws  of  decent  living  that  govern 
those  members  of  civilized  communities  who  have 
not  had  the  advantages  of  a  higher  education. 
The  most  serious  difficulties  between  faculties 
and  students  and  between  students  and  the  police, 
the  country  over,  for  the  past  twenty  years,  have 
arisen  in  connection  with  displays  of  *  college 
spirit'  after  the  'big  game.'  Any  college  and  any 
community  might  cheerfully  sacrifice  this  kind  of 
college  spirit. 

But  some  men  mean  by  college  spirit  something 
finer  than  lawlessness,  dissipation,  and  rowdy 
ism.  They  mean  the  loyalty  to  an  institution 
which  makes  a  student  guard  its  good  name  by 
being  manly  and  courteous  in  conduct  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places.  They  mean  the  sense  of 
responsibility  which  aids  a  student  in  forming 
habits  of  temperance  and  industry.  They  mean 
that  eagerness  to  make  a  grateful  use  of  his  op 
portunities  which  leads  a  student  to  keep  his  own 
body  fit,  through  moderate  athletics,  and  a  phys 
ical  training  that  knows  no  season  —  is  never 
broken.  By  college  spirit  some  men  mean  this 
and  far  more :  they  mean  that  loyalty  to  a  college 
which  rivets  a  man  to  the  severest  tasks  of  scholar 
ship,  through  which  he  gains  intellectual  power 
and  enthusiasm,  without  which  no  graduate  is  an 
entire  credit  to  any  college ;  and  finally  they  mean 
that  vision  of  an  ideal  life  beyond  Commencement 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

which  shows  a  man  that  only  through  the  rigid 
subordination  of  transient  and  trivial  pleasures 
can  he  hope  to  become  the  only  great  victory  a 
university  ever  wins  —  a  trained,  devoted,  and 
.inspired  alumnusV  "working  for  the  welfare  of 
mankind.  There  is  no  evidence  that  the  inter 
collegiate  athletics  of  to-day  inculcate  in  many 
men  this  kind  of  college  spirit. 

Have  I  exaggerated  the  evils  of  intercollegiate 
athletics?  Possibly  I  have.  Exceptions  should 
be  cited  here  and  there.  But  I  am  convinced 
that  college  faculties  agree  with  me  in  my  main 
contentions.  My  impression  is  that  at  least  three 
fourths  of  the  teachers  I  have  met  the  country 
over  believe  that  the  American  college  would 
better  serve  its  highest  purposes,  if  intercollegiate 
athletics  were  no  more.  At  a  recent  dinner  of  ten 
deans  and  presidents,  they  declared,  one  by  one, 
in  confidence,  that  they  would  abolish  intercol 
legiate  athletics  if  they  could  withstand  the  pres 
sure  of  students  and  alumni. 

Is  it  therefore  necessary  for  all  institutions  to 
give  up  intercollegiate  athletics  permanently? 
Probably  not.  Let  our  colleges  first  adopt  what 
ever  measures  may  be  necessary  to  make  athletics 
yield  their  educational  values  to  all  students  and 
teachers.  If  intercollegiate  athletics  can  then  be 
conducted  as  incidental  and  contributory  to  the 
main  purposes  of  athletics,  well  and  good.  But 
first  of  all  the  question  must  be  decisively  settled, 
which  aims  are  to  dominate  —  those  of  business 

1 60 


INTERCOLLEGIATE  ATHLETICS 

or  those  of  education.  And  it  will  be  difficult  for 
a  college  already  in  the  clutches  of  commercial 
ism  to  retain  the  system  and  at  the  same  time 
cultivate  a  spirit  antagonistic  to  it.  Probably 
the  quicker  and  surer  way  would  be  to  suspend 
all  intercollegiate  athletics  for  a  college  generation 
by  agreement  of  groups  of  colleges  — •  during 
which  period  every  effort  should  be  made  to  es 
tablish  the  tradition  of  athletics  for  education. 
If  an  institution  could  not  survive  such  a  period 
of  transition,  it  is  a  fair  question  whether  the  in 
stitution  has  any  reason  for  survival. 

Typically  American  though  our  frantic  devo 
tion  to  intercollegiate  athletics  may  be,  we  shall 
not  long  tolerate  a  system  which  provides  only  a 
costly,  injurious,  and  excessive  regime  of  physical 
training  for  a  few  students,  especially  those  who 
need  it  least.  The  call  to-day  is  for  inexpensive, 
healthful,  and  moderate  exercise  for  all  students, 
especially  those  who  need  it  most.  Colleges  must 
sooner  or  later  heed  that  call :  their  athletics  must 
be  for  education,  not  for  business. 


Car- Window  Botany 

By  Lida  F.  Baldwin 

ONE  thinks  of  the  botanist  as  in  silence  and  soli 
tude  wandering  by  some  forest  brook,  or  pene 
trating  into  almost  impenetrable  swamps,  or 
climbing  rocky  mountain  paths,  lured  on  by  the 
hope  of  finding  some  rare  and  curious  flower. 
But  I  in  my  own  experience  have  had  some  of  my 
best  finds  from  the  windows  of  a  railway  train. 

It  was  with  people  sitting  all  around  me,  and 
the  engine  puffing  noisily  away  on  an  up  grade, 
that  my  delighted  eyes  first  fell  on  the  one-flow 
ered  pyrola.  The  railway  cutting  had  been  made 
in  the  heart  of  the  deep  forest,  and  as  the  bank 
settled  down,  some  of  the  rarer  and  shyer  forest 
growths,  such  as  ground-pine,  arbutus,  and  pyrola, 
in  the  course  of  years  had  slipped  over  the  brink 
of  the  cutting  and  were  now  part  way  down  the 
bank.  Inside  the  car  were  tired  and  grimy  faces; 
just  a  few  feet  outside  were  forest  freshness  and 
greenness,  and  the  white  blossoms  of  the  pyrola 
with  their  delicate  flush. 

Sometimes  there  is  no  bank  on  either  side  of 
the  railway,  and  from  the  car  window  one  catches 

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CAR-WINDOW  BOTANY 

glimpses  into  the  edges  of  forests,  or  looks  down 
upon  swamps  and  small  clear  ponds,  or  gazes 
across  broad  level  meadows;  but  more  often  one's 
view  from  the  car  window  is  confined  to  the  nar 
row  ditch  of  water  just  beyond  the  road-bed  and 
to  the  sides  of  the  cutting  just  beyond  the  ditch. 
Even  in  that  confined  outlook  there  are  always 
possibilities;  and  it  was  in  just  such  a  ditch  of 
water,  as  our  train  slowed  up  on  the  outskirts  of 
Buffalo,  that  I  saw  growing  great  numbers  of 
what  looked  like  miniature  calla  lilies.  There 
were  the  same  golden,  erect  spadix,  and  the  same 
ivory-white  spathe  rolled  back  in  the  very  curve 
of  the  spathe  of  the  calla  lily ;  but  the  flower  was 
not  one  quarter  the  size  of  the  calla.  As  usual 
my  botany  was  in  my  handbag;  and  the  tempta 
tion  to  make  a  quick  dash  from  the  train,  to  try 
to  secure  one  specimen  for  analysis,  was  almost 
irresistible.  But  I  did  resist  the  temptation;  for 
the  bank  was  quite  steep,  and  I  never  could  have 
climbed  back  in  time  if  the  train  had  started  while 
I  was  trying  to  secure  my  flower;  and  a  lonely 
woman  would  have  been  left  in  the  dusk,  watch 
ing  the  train  bearing  her  friends  vanish  in  the 
deepening  twilight.  But  the  small  white  beauties 
were  never  forgotten,  and  years  afterwards  I 
found  the  flower,  arum  palustris,  growing  in  a 
swamp  not  many  miles  from  my  old  home. 

One  July  day  I  traveled  from  Quebec  to  Port 
land  on  the  slowest  of  trains.  The  road  ran  for 
much  of  the  way,  first  on  one  side,  then  on  the 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

other,  of  the  Chaudiere  River,  but  never  far  out  of 
sight  of  its  clear  brown  waters.  Fortunately  for 
me,  our  locomotive  used  wood  for  fuel,  and  con 
sequently  every  few  hours  we  would  stop  at  some 
great  woodpile  in  a  forest  clearing  while  the  train 
men  threw  a  fresh  supply  of  wood  into  the  tender; 
and  some  of  the  passengers  took  advantage  of  the 
stop  to  make  short  explorations  into  the  forest. 
About  mid-day,  as  we  were  riding  slowly  along,  I 
began  to  notice  a  pink-purple  flower  that  was  new 
to  me,  growing  here  and  there  in  rather  marshy 
places.  Shortly  after  I  had  first  seen  the  flower 
the  added  slowness  of  the  train  showed  that  we 
were  coming  to  another  woodpile.  The  instant 
the  train  stopped  I  was  out  of  the  cars,  over  the 
low  rail  fence,  and  picking  my  way  carefully  from 
grassy  hummock  to  grassy  hummock;  and  soon 
I  had  found  a  specimen.  Upon  analysis  it  proved 
to  be  calopogon,  familiar  to  all  New  Englanders 
from  childhood,  but  new  to  my  Ohio  eyes. 

I  have  never  made  any  formal  herbarium,  and 
the  only  botanical  record  I  have  ever  kept  con 
sists  of  the  date  and  place  of  my  first  seeing  the 
flower  written  opposite  its  scientific  name  in  the 
margin  of  the  pages  of  my  old  school-girl's  copy 
of  Gray's  Botany.  But  that  is  the  only  record 
one  needs  to  whom  all  the  flowers  one  knows  are 
either  old  friends  or  new  acquaintances  —  in 
either  case  distinct  individuals.  Often,  as  I  have 
been  turning  the  pages  of  the  old  botany  in  a  bit 
of  analyzing,  I  have  stopped  at  the  page  on  which 

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CAR-WINDOW  BOTANY 

is  written,  opposite  the  scientific  name  of  the 
calopogon,  'Saint  Henry's,  Canada,  July  n,  1884' ; 
and  across  the  more  than  twenty  years  that  lie 
between,  I  smell  once  more  the  balsam  of  the  Ca 
nadian  forest,  and  see  the  amber-brown  waters  of 
the  Chaudiere  River,  and  hear  the  shouts  of  the 
trainmen  as  they  throw  the  great  sticks  of  wood 
up  to  the  tender;  and  giving  color  to  all  this 
mental  picture  is  the  pink-purple  blossom  of  the 
calopogon. 

But  all  trains  do  not  have  the  accommodating 
habit  of  stopping  for  wood  just  after  you  have 
seen  a  strange  flower;  in  that  case,  all  that  you 
can  do  is,  take  the  best  mental  landmarks  you 
can,  and  then  at  the  first  opportunity  go  back  for 
your  specimen.  One  summer  I  was  going  down 
on  the  express  from  Philadelphia  to  Cape  May. 
As  you  near  the  coast  the  road  runs  through  very 
level  country,  and  between  the  railway  and  the 
pine  wood  lies  a  strip  of  marshy  ground  about 
forty  feet  wide.  Each  year,  as  I  go  back  to  the 
sea-coast,  I  watch  eagerly  for  my  first  sight  of  the 
two  characteristic  flowers  of  the  Jersey  coast,  the 
swamp  mallow  and  the  sabbatia.  On  this  par 
ticular  morning  I  had  already  seen  many  of  the 
great  mallows  with  their  rose-pink  flowers,  so  like 
those  of  the  hollyhock  that  not  even  the  most  care 
less  eye  can  fail  to  notice  the  family  resemblance ; 
and  I  had  welcomed  them  as  a  sure  sign  of  the 
fast-nearing  seashore. 

Now,  with  my  face,  as  usual,  close  to  the  win- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

dow,  I  was  watching  the  sparse  marsh-grass  most 
narrowly  to  see  if  I  could  detect  amidst  it  the 
pink  star-shaped  flower  of  the  sabbatia.  Sud 
denly  the  marsh-grass  was  set  thick  with  spikes 
of  yellow  flowers,  just  rising  above  the  level  of  the 
grass.  There  was  only  that  one  hurried  look  as 
the  train  went  by;  but  from  that  look  I  felt  al 
most  certain  of  two  things:  the  first  was  that  I 
had  never  seen  that  flower  before,  and  the  second, 
that  it  must  be  close  of  kin  to  an  old  flower  friend 
of  mine,  the  white  fringed-orchis. 

Then  and  there  I  determined  to  get  that  flower, 
and  the  first  thing  was  to  make  sure  of  its  location. 
At  first  this  seemed  almost  hopeless,  since  for 
miles  back  we  had  had  that  narrow  strip  of  marsh- 
grass  flanked  by  the  unchanging  pine  woods ;  but 
in  a  few  minutes  our  road  passed  under  another 
railway;  here  was  one  landmark,  and  in  a  couple 
of  minutes  more  we  went  past  a  way-station  slowly 
enough  for  me  to  read  the  name  on  the  board ; 
now  I  knew  that  I  could  find  my  plant.  The  next 
day  we  took  one  of  the  local  trains  from  Cape 
May,  got  off  at  the  station  whose  name  I  had  read, 
and  started  down  the  track.  After  a  walk  of  a 
mile  we  passed  under  that  other  railroad;  and 
about  two  miles  farther  down  the  track  I  saw 
again  the  yellow  spikes  of  the  flowers  barely  o'er- 
topping  the  grass. 

It  had  been  a  hot  July  morning  with  a  sultry 
land  breeze  blowing,  and  as  we  walked  the  three 
miles  down  the  unshaded  track,  we  had  weariedly 

1 66 


CAR- WINDOW  BOTANY 

and  unavailingly  slapped  at  mosquitoes  at  every 
step.  All  of  these  discomforts  together  had  not 
daunted  my  courage ;  but  the  swarms  of  mosqui 
toes  that  arose  buzzing  at  my  first  step  into  the 
marsh-grass  made  me  draw  back  to  the  compara 
tive  security  of  the  railway  track,  with  the  feeling 
that  no  flower  could  repay  one  for  facing  those 
swarms.  A  second  look  at  the  yellow  flowers 
growing  not  thirty  feet  away  gave  me  fresh  cour 
age  and  I  started  again.  I  was  as  quick  as  pos 
sible;  but  when  I  was  back  once  more  on  the 
track,  this  time  with  my  hands  full  of  the  flowers, 
face  and  hands  and  arms  were  one  mass  of  blotches 
from  the  mosquito  bites. 

Upon  analysis  the  flower  proved  to  be  the  yel 
low  fringed-orchis,  the  handsomest  species  of  its 
genus,  and  the  one  most  closely  allied  to  the  white 
fringed-orchis.  Our  train  had  been  running  about 
forty  miles  an  hour;  I  had  never  even  known  that 
there  was  a  yellow  orchid,  but  in  that  one  quick 
glance  from  the  express  train  the  unmistakable 
family  look  of  the  orchis  had  shown. 

Success  and  pleasure  in  car-window  botany  de 
pend  not  so  much  on  a  scientific  knowledge  of 
structural  details  as  on  the  ability  of  the  eye  to 
recognize  at  a  glance  the  characteristic  effect 
produced  by  a  mass  of  details.  It  is  this  ability 
which  enables  you  to  be  sure  that  you  recognize 
the  faces  of  old  flower  friends  in  the  hurried  glance 
cast  from  the  window;  which  enables  you  to  tell 
with  certainty  gray-blue  clump  of  houstonias  from 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

gray-blue  clump  of  hepaticas,  wind-swept  bank  of 
purplish  phlox  from  wind-swept  bank  of  wild  ge 
ranium;  and  it  is  that  same  ability  to  recognize 
the  characteristic  effect  produced  by  a  group  of 
structural  details  which  enables  one  to  place  with 
out  analysis  the  new  flower  in  the  right  family. 

I  have  always  been  secretly  very  proud  of  the 
certainty  with  which  at  the  first  sight  of  the  yel 
low  flower  I  felt  that  it  was  an  orchis,  but  all  my 
feeling  in  connection  with  it  is  not  that  of  pleas 
ure.  Certain  flowers  always  recall  to  me  certain 
sounds;  in  most  cases  the  sound  associated  with 
a  flower  is  the  one  heard  at  the  time  at  which  I 
first  saw  the  flower;  and  to  this  day,  with  the 
thought  of  the  yellow  fringed-orchis  is  insepar 
ably  joined  that  most  persistent  and  irritating  of 
sounds,  the  buzzing  of  the  mosquito. 

But  the  true  history  of  a  car-window  botanist 
is  not  always  a  record  of  successful  achievement, 
of  the  triumphant  finding  of  his  flower;  he  also 
has  his  haunting  disappointments,  his  glimpses  of 
strange  flowers  which  he  is  never  afterwards  able 
to  place.  One  July  day,  riding  through  northern 
New  Hampshire,  I  saw  just  over  the  fence  at  the 
edge  of  the  woods  a  tall  plant  —  evidently  some 
kind  of  a  lily.  It  bore  a  single  dark  orange-red 
flower,  which  did  not  droop  as  do  the  flowers  of 
the  meadow  lily,  but  stood  stiffly  erect.  I  have 
never  seen  that  lily  since;  though  never  does  a 
July  come,  especially  if  it  is  to  be  spent  in  a  new 
place,  that  I  do  not  think,  'Maybe  this  year  I 

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CAR-WINDOW  BOTANY 

shall  find  my  lily.'  Perhaps,  after  all,  such  ex 
periences  are  not  to  be  classed  with  the  disap 
pointments  either  of  life  or  of  car-window  botany 
—  is  it  not  rather  true  that  to  both  they  give  zest 
and  expectancy? 

The  charm  of  such  botanizing  is  not  alone  in 
finding  or  in  hoping  to  find  some  new  flower :  even 
more  enduring  is  the  pleasure  that  comes  from  the 
recognition  of  the  faces  of  old  friends  in  new  sur 
roundings.  An  April  day's  journey  was  made 
one  long  pleasure;  for  the  swamplike  ditch  just 
below  the  road-bed  shone  golden  with  the  intense 
yellow  of  the  marsh-marigold,  an  old  friend  from 
my  earliest  childhood ;  and  when  the  railway  ran 
half-way  up  a  hillside,  I  spied,  amid  the  dead 
leaves  of  last  year,  the  little  clumps  of  the  clus 
tering  blue  hepaticas,  and  recognized  even  in 
those  fleeting  glances  the  singularly  starry  effect 
produced  by  the  numerous  white  stamens ;  and  as 
the  train  crossed  over  the  creeks,  that  flow  over 
rocky  bottoms  from  out  the  hemlock  woods,  I  saw 
in  the  opening  up  of  the  creek  bed  the  June-berry 
trees  in  showers  of  white  bloom,  looking  doubly 
white  against  the  dark  green  of  the  hemlocks, 
just  as  I  had  seen  them  the  day  before  in  the  hem 
lock  woods  of  Mill  Creek  at  my  own  home. 

One  of  the  keenest  pleasures  of  the  railway 
botanist  comes  from  his  enjoyment  of  the  massed 
color  of  great  quantities  of  flowers  of  the  same 
kind.  One  morning  our  train  was  running  along 
through  the  level  Jersey  country;  it  was  at  that 

169 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

wretched  hour  of  the  morning  when  you  have  just 
taken  your  place  in  some  one  else's  seat  while  the 
porter  is  getting  your  own  ready,  and  you  have 
that  all-over  miserable  feeling  that  conies  from  a 
night's  ride  in  a  stuffy  sleeper.  In  an  instant  all 
discomfort  was  forgotten  in  the  sight  of  a  wide 
salt  meadow  which  seemed  one  mass  of  the  pink 
swamp-mallows.  The  gray  morning  mist  was 
turned  silvery  white  by  the  rising  sun,  and  giving 
color  to  it  all  were  the  wide  stretches  of  the  flow 
ers.  It  was  all  one  shimmering  mass  of  misty  sil 
very-gray,  sunlight  radiance,  and  rose- color  as 
delicate  as  that  of  the  lining  of  some  seashells. 

Once  again,  this  time  on  one  of  our  home  roads 
near  Pittsburg,  I  felt  the  beauty  of  the  color  of 
great  masses  of  flowers.  The  railway  runs  along 
about  half-way  up  the  bluffs  by  the  side  of  the 
Beaver  River;  as  we  rounded  a  curve,  the  steep 
bank  above  me  turned  suddenly  intensely  red 
with  the  vivid  color  of  the  scarlet  campion.  Only 
those  who  notice  most  closely  have  any  idea  how 
rare  a  color  in  our  wild  flowers  any  shade  of  true 
red  is.  Nearly  all  the  flowers  that  are  commonly 
spoken  of  as  red  are  in  reality  purplish  pink  or 
reddish  lilac.  Indeed  I  know  only  two  wild  flow 
ers  whose  color  is  a  true  red.  One  of  these  is  the 
cardinal  lobelia,  whose  petals  are  of  the  darkest, 
clearest,  most  velvety  red;  and  the  other  flower 
is  the  scarlet  campion.  The  color  of  this  latter  is 
true  scarlet,  and  the  river  bluff  that  June  morn 
ing  fairly  glowed  with  its  bloom.  It  is  Holmes 

170 


CAR-WINDOW  BOTANY 

who  compares  the  color  of  the  cardinal  flower  to 
that  of  drops  of  blood  new  fallen  from  a  wounded 
eagle's  breast;  but  any  true  comparison  for  the 
color  of  this  other  flower  must  be  founded  on  life, 
and  on  life  when  it  is  at  its  fullest  of  strength  and 
of  enjoyment. 

Even  the  most  ardent  of  car-window  botanists 
will  not  claim  that  the  only  place  from  which  the 
beauty  of  the  color  of  flowers  in  mass  can  be  ap 
preciated  is  the  window  of  a  railway  train.  To  all 
there  come  memories  of  fitful  spring  days  when 
in  long  country  drives  they  have  seen  partly  worn- 
out  meadows  and  barren  hillsides  turned  to  the 
softest  blue-gray  mist  by  the  delicate  color  of 
countless  blossoms  of  houstonia.  And  as  they 
drove  slowly  along  the  partly  dried,  muddy  roads 
of  mid-April  the  effect  of  every  varying  phase  of 
the  spring  weather  on  the  massed  color  sank  slowly 
into  their  consciousness.  They  had  time  to  no 
tice  how  blue  was  the  color-mist  lying  on  the  shel 
tered  meadows  in  the  sunshine,  and  how  coldly 
gray  it  grew  as  it  crept  up  the  hillsides  across 
which  the  chill  spring  wind  was  blowing. 

And  if  one  lives  in  a  country  where  there  are 
chestnut  ridges,  one  looks  forward  through  all 
the  spring  to  that  one  week  of  late  June  and 
earliest  July  when  the  chestnut  trees  will  be  in 
bloom.  The  long  staminate  flowers  of  the  chest 
nut  are  a  soft  cream-yellow  with  a  greenish  tint; 
and  on  the  ridges  where  the  trees  grow  in  abun 
dance  the  great  irregular  masses  of  their  blossom- 

171 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ing  tops  do  not  stand  out  against  their  back 
ground  of  the  dark  green  foliage  of  midsummer, 
but  blend  softly  with  it,  giving  to  all  such  an 
indescribable  effect  of  lightness  and  airiness  that 
the  whole  wooded  ridge  seems  not  to  be  fastened 
securely  to  the  earth,  but  to  be  floating  cloud- 
like  above  it.  During  that  one  week  of  the  chest 
nut-blossoming  one  stops  at  door  or  at  win 
dow  in  the  midst  of  the  early  morning  work  to 
watch  for  the  moment  when  the  first  rays  of  the 
rising  sun,  falling  on  the  cream-yellow  of  the 
chestnut  tops,  turn  them  into  their  own  deep 
gold ;  and  at  the  restful  close  of  day  one  lingers  on 
the  doorstep  through  the  long  June  twilight  till 
their  blossoming  tops  can  no  longer  be  distin 
guished  from  the  dark  foliage  of  the  other  trees 
in  the  gathering  darkness. 

All  one's  life  long  the  pictures  of  old  meadow 
lands  gray-blue  with  the  mist  of  the  houstonias 
are  recalled  by  the  alternate  glinting  sunshine 
and  bleak  gloom  of  an  April  day ;  and  the  blossom 
ing  chestnut  woods  form  the  background  to  many 
recollections  of  the  old  home  life.  But  these  pic 
tures  which  have  become  a  part  of  one's  inmost 
consciousness  are  scarcely  more  dear  than  that 
one,  seen  for  a  few  moments,  of  the  low-lying  Jer 
sey  meadows  flushing  rose-pink  with  the  mallows 
in  the  misty  morning  sunshine ;  or  than  that  other 
'vision  of  scarce  a  moment, '  the  river  bluff  scarlet 
with  the  flowers  of  the  campion,  seen  from  the 
windows  of  a  railway  train. 


Studies   in   Solitude 

By  Fannie  Stearns  GifTord 

i 

SHE  was  never  lonely,  she  told  herself.    The  soli 
tude  of  her  little  old  white  house,  sitting  retired 

from  the  village  street  among  its  lilac  trees  c,;'d 

.  *          .•*v**»,*-» 

sw4*w?as,   did  not  frighten  or  depress  her.    <She 

-  .~f  •*«.. C-  f 


could  spend  a  whole  day  of  rain  there,  seeing  no 
one  but  the  grocer's  boy,  the  big  gray  cat,  and  oc 
casional  stooped  hurrying  figures  out  in  the  wet 
street   and  could  come  down  into  evening  calmly, 
busied  with  her  enforced  or  chosen  duties  and 
thoughts.    A  cloud  seemed  to  wrap  her  round  in 
many  folds  of  seclusion  till  the  common  world  of 
hurry  and  friction  and  loud  or  secret  loaves  a-ad 
hates  was  dinvbpji^r_e^es_and  ears,  ^j^reet  sounds! 
*and  whistles  of  trains  at  the  cross-roads  were 
;muffled  echoes;  but  the  ticking  of  the  tall  clock, 
/the  throbbing  of  rain  on  a  tin  roof,  the  infrequent 
wind  banging  at  a  loose  window,  the  cat's  creepy 
tread  on  the  stairs,  grew  rhythmic  and  insistent. 
Yet  she  was  not  Ion  el  v      :>he  never  stopped  to 
l»rood,  listening  lougj,o  perilous  voices.     She  de 
nied  even  to  certain  pieces  of  furniture,  books,  or 

173 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ornaments,  their  passive  right  to  conjure  up  the 
spectre  of  her  solitude.  If  a  room  seemed  too  vi 
brant  with  unseen  presences,  she  would  enter  it 
and  drive  out  the  quivering  mystery  with  some 
brisk  petty  business  of  sweeping,  of  shifting  a 
picture,  or  rearranging  a  book-shelf.  Often  she 
whistled  softlv  about  her  work,  although  there 
were  moments  when  as  if  by  an  instinct  she  would 
stop  short  and  glance  over  her  shoulder,  to  see 
nothing,  and  after  that  to  be  still. 

So  the  day  would  shift  from  gray  dawn  to  gray 
dusk;  and  she  had  not  allowed  herself  to  think 
that  she  might  have  cause  for  loneliness,  there  in 
the  quiet  house  behind  its  dripping  lilacjlrees. 

Only  in  the  evenings  did  the  clock  and  the  rain 
become  too  loud  and  real.  Then,  as  she  sat  writh 
a  pleasant  book  or  broidery  in  the  yellow  lamplit 
circle  of  her  sitting-room,  warm  and  quaint  in  its 
accumulation  of  color,  —  old  gay  reds,  greens, 
blues,  tumbled  together  by  generations  of  fond 
house-holders,  and  now  subdued  into  harmony  by 
years  and  the  low  light,  —  she  would  find  herself 
all  at  once  rigid  as  an  ice-image,  yet  alert  as  a 
coiled  serpent;  listening,  listening,  —  for  what? 
For  a  quick  step  on  the  flags  before  the  door? 
For  a  long  jangling  peal  at  the  bell?  Fer~a  voice 
in  the  hall,  or  a  sick  querulous  summons  from  the 
downstairs  chamber,  or  the  scraping  of  a  chair 
from  above?  ^  No,  she  knew  that  she  had  no  cause 
to  wait  for  these  things.^  There  was  only  the  rain, 
the  clock,  sleek  Diogenes  purring  on  the  white 

174 


STUDIES  IN  SOLITUDE 


fox-skin,  the  lamp-wiGk-^pett-mg-ar  4ktle-  to  itself, 
and  once  in  a  while,  out  in  the  dark  streety^wwe 
splash  and  clatter  of  wheels/  the  faint  wet  whis 
per  of  feet  that  always  passed  her  gate. 

So,  with  a  self-scorning  smile  and  a  drawing  of 
her  hand  across  her  eyes,  she  would  take  up  again 
the  book  or  needle-work,  and  stop  abruptly  that 

;  rigid  listening  for  sounds  which  never  came. 
Long  since,  on  her  first  solitary  night  in  the  old 
house,  she  had  vowed  to  herself  that  she  would  not 
be  sad,  or  strange,  no  matter  what  tricks  her 
heart  and  mind  might  play  her.  She  would  not 
fear  memory  and  anticipation,  but  would  compel 
them  to  be  her  servants,  to  keep  their  distance. 
She  had  been  young  then,  and  had  not  quite  be 
lieved  in  her  solitude.  Now  that  she  knew  it 
through  and  through,  she  was  still  aware  that  to 
look  too  far  back  or  too  far  forward  would  equally 
undo  her.  On  these  rainy  nights  of  withdrawal, 
her  trial-times  were  still  upon  her.  If  she  failed 
now,  if  one  shudder  or  one  tear  escaped  her,  she 
was  lost  forever  ;  and  the  white  house  would  drive 

k  her  out,  into  a  world  where  she  could  no  more 

^choose  her  own  way  of  being  alone. 

But  she^was  not  lonely,  she  repeated;  and  to 

prove  it,  her  mind  would  indulge  in  a  fantasia  of 

ioneline;    .     Thu  book  would  slip  from  her  hand, 

land  she,   gazing  half-hypnotized  into  shadowy  [ 

I  corners,  visited  all  the  solitary  people  over  the 

wide  world.     It  pleased  her  to  imagine  homesick 

I  omeoro  in  ottning  Indian  bungalow 

175 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

and  girls,  fresh  come  to  the  City,  wandering  for 
lorn  through  the  glare  of  streets,  or  idling  under 
their  meagre  lodging-house  gas- jets*; light-keepers 
on  desolate  sand-dunes  and  rock-ledgesrclimbing 
at  night  twisted  iron  steps  to  tend  the  eternal 
lamp;  night-watchmen  pacing  deserted  yards  a«ri 
mill-corridors;  sailors -in  the  dead  wateh;  poets 
and  prophets  trying  passionately  to  capture  the 
vwild  visions  which -leaped  across  their  darkness; 
and  most  of  all,  many  women  sitting  as  she  did  in 
warm  quaint  rooms,  near  village  streets,  liearing 
the  clock  tick  and  the  rain  throb. 

It  pleased  her,  to  travel  so  on  light  unhindered 
wing.  Almost  it  seemed  as  if  her  soul  left  her 
body,  and  fared  out  to  knock  against  every  lonely 
window  and  to  keep  dumb  company  round  every 
solitary  lamp.  And  she  felt  that  she  was  one  of 
an  endless  army,  marching  straightforwardly  and 
silently  out  upon  their  lives,  stripped  of  the  dis 
guises  that  kindred  and  close  friendship  invent, 
and  making,  in  return  for  the  silence  of  their 
hearts  and  the  smiling  of  their  lips,  only  one  de 
mand  of  all  that  encountered  them. 

That  demand  she  never  shaped,  of  her  own  will. 
But  when  she  had  sat  a  long  time,  dreaming,  and 
had  at  length  roused  herself  to- make-fast  doors  ' 
and  windows*  y&ad  shut  the  cat  in  the  kitchen,  ! 
taken  her  hand-lamj^and  gone  up  the  broad  stairs 
to  bed  —  then,  in  the  gay  chintz-hung  security 
of  her  own  chamber,  her  throat  would  fashion 

176 


STUDIES  IN  SOLITUDE 

involuntarily  those  words  that  her  heart  and  lips 
refused  to  let  themselves  speak. 

'It  is  all  right  enough,'  her  throat  would  say 
for  her,  as  she  turned  down  the  counterpane,  un 
tied  her  shoes,  and  wound  her  watch.  '  I  am  quite 
all  safe  and  right.  But- —  no  one  must  ask  me  — 
if  I  am  lonely.  No  one  must  ever  ask  me  that.' 

II 

It  had  appeared  presently  that  her  house  was 
haunted,  though  not  by  ghostly  terrors.  For 
herself,  she  had  only  felt,  at  times,  the  vaguely 
imagined  intimation  of  some  presence  other  than 
her  own  in  the  quiet  rooms.  But  she  had  no  surer 
knowledge  of  her  dimly  harbored  guests  until  a 
friend,  wearied-out  with  the  love  and  care  of  over- 
many  babies,  came  to  her  for  rest;  and  after  two 
days  of  grateful  idleness  in  her  sunny  window, 
asked  suddenly,  — 

' Miriam,  whose  are  the  Voices?' 

'What  voices?'  Miriam  parried;  and  Lucy  de 
scribed  them :  happy,  laughing  voices,  as  of  young 
people  playing  and  gossiping  together.  '  I  have 
heard  them  so  often  when  I  was  lying  alone  and 
you  were  out,  or  off  somewhere.  I  almost  asked  a 
dozen  times  who  was  talking.  They  are  always 
downstairs,  or  across  the  hall,  or  under  the  win 
dow;  and  they  are  such  happy  voices:  young 
"voices  —  oh,  very  sweet  and  glad.' 

Miriam  smiled  and  stroked  her  friend's  ner 
vous  fingers.  Lucy  had  always  heard  and  seen 

177 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

more  than  other  people  did,  and  now  that  -eke 
was  so  4«=ed,  no  doubt  her  worn-out  fancy  be 
fooled  her  lightly.  They  talked  it  over  together. 
Lucy,  smiling  at  herself,  none  the  less  insisted : 
there  were  Voices  in  the  house. 

'Some  time  you'll  hear  them  too,'  she  nodded. 
'They're  not  sad  or  dreadful  or  gloomy;  oh,  no! 
They're  just  young  and  glad.  I  love  to  hear  them.' 

And  another  evening,  when  Miriam  came  into 
the  sitting-room  after  an  errand  down  the  street, 
Lucy  greeted  her  eagerly,  saying,  - 

'It  was  music  this  time.  Oh,  I've  heard  such 
music!  I  almost  went  to  see  if  some  one  was  n't 
playing.  It  was  like  a  harp,  I  think,  with  a  violin 
and  piano :  it  was  very  beautiful.  I  thought  some 
one  must  be  playing,  until  it  came  to  me  that  of 
course  it  was  the  Young  People.  It  was  happy 
music,  just  as  the  Voices  are  so  happy.  Miriam, 
there  are  young  people  somehow  in  your  house.' 

It  became  a  sort  of  gentle  pleasant  joke  be 
tween  them,  while  Lucy  stayed  on.  'Have  you 
heard  them  to-day?'  Miriam  would  ask;  and 
sometimes  Lucy  replied,  'No;  they  must  have 
gone  off  on  a  picnic ;  it  was  such  a  good  day' ;  or  j' 
'  Yes ;  they  were  here  while  you  were  out  this  after 
noon.  I  don't  see  why  you  don't  hear  them.  * 

And  Miriam  would  shake  her  head.  'I  never  hear 
and  see  Things,  you  know.  They  are  your  Voices, 
Lucy ;  they  are  your  babies  grown-up  who  are  talk 
ing  to  you  even  here  in  my  old-maid  house.' 

But  Lucy  denied  it.  '  No,  Miriam,  I  never  heard 


STUDIES  IN  SOLITUDE 

them  anywhere  else.  They  belong  to  you  and  your 
house,  and  they  mean  something  good,  and  sweet, 
and  coming,  not  gone  by.  They're  not  ghosts.' 

And  when  at  last  Miriam  kissed  her  good-bye 
at  the  train,  Lucy  was  saying,  *  I'm  glad  to  think 
of  you,  there  in  your  nice  sunny  house,  with  the 
Voices,  £nd  the  Musit/.  Good-bye,  dear.' 

As  Miriam  sat  alone  that  evening,  she  w£>n- 
dered  about  those  young  happy  presences.  /  She 

r  wished  that  she  could  hear  them  laugh  and  sing 
and  play;  not  merely  feel  them  blindly  stirring 
about  her.  She  sat,  deep  in  reverie,  smiling  at 

{   Lucy's  merry  yet   honest   insistence   upon   her 

\  quaint  little  hallucination,  —  at  herself  for  more 
than  half  believing  it. 

'  It  is  better  that  I  never  hear  them, '  she  con 
cluded  at  last,  rather  soberly,  *I  couldn't  live*\ 

'  alone  this  way  if  I  heard  them.     It  is  all  well    \ 
enough  for  Lucy,  with  her  husband  and  her  house-    \\ 
ful  of  babies,  to  hear  things  like  that;  granting 
that  she  truly  did,  dear  mysterious  Lucy!  —  But 
if  I  heard  them  —  if  I  heard  them,  — '  she  glanced 
about  the  room  as  if  she  half  expected  to  see  a 
gay  face  above  the  piano,  a  bright  head  bending 
by  the  lamp,  —  '  it  would  mean  that  I  was  going  a 
little  bit  mad:  yes,  just  a  little  bit  mad,  for  all 
that  they  are  sweet,  young  voices. ' 

She  shivered,  stood  up  quickly,  and  went  over 
to  the  long  mirror.  ' Miriam,'  she  whispered, 
looking  into  the  shadowy  face  that  met  hers, 
'Lucy  said  those  were  young  voices,  coming 

179 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

voices,  not  gone  by.  But  you  know,  Miriam,  that 
if  they  are,  they  belong  to  some  one  else  who  may 
live  in  this  house:  to  some  one  else,  I  tell  you,  not 
to  you  at  all.  Don't  be  a  fool.  —  You've  been 
quite  sensible  so  far:  don't  spoil  it  all  now.  Do 
you  hear?  you  must  n't  even  wish  to  hear  those 
Voices,  or  that  lovely  harp-music.  Now  you 
understand. ' 

Months  later  she  saw  her  friend  again.  '  How 
are  the  Voices?'  Lucy  asked  gayly,  across  the 
laughing  baby  who  pulled  at  her  necktie  and 
snatched  down  her  curls. 

1 1  never  hear  them, '  Miriam  answered,  almost 
shortly.  *  You  know,  don't  you,  —  "to  him  that 
hath  shall  be  given"?  —  Please  may  I  hold  the 
baby?' 

in 

Yet  often,  when  she  had  spent  a  part  of  the  day 
or  evening  away  from  home,  she  had  a  curious 
expectation  of  returning  to  find  her  house  not 
empty  and  silent,  but  with  something  alive  in  it 
to  greet  her.  She  did  not  think  of  the  people  who 
had  been  her  own  in  the  different  days  so  far 
past,  nor  of  her  living  friends,  nor  of  the  young 
presences  whose  laughter  Lucy  had  insisted  upon 
hearing.  It  seemed  to  her  simply  that  there  was 
more  life  and  motion  and  personality  in  her  wait 
ing  house,  than  just  Diogenes  crouching  on  the 
front  porch,  and  the  kettle  steaming  to  itself  on 
the  back  of  the  stove. 

1 80 


STUDIES  IN  SOLITUDE 


One  winter  evening-she  walked  late  down  the 
village  street.  The  moon  ro.de  high  and  white. 
Every  frosty  breath  shone,  every  step  creaked 
and  crackled  in  the  snow.  Through  the  thin  leaf 
less  maple-trunks  and  lilac-boughs  she  could  see 
her  house  plainly :  the  snowy  roof,  glittering  to 
the  moon,  the  low  eaves,  ragged  with  silver  icicles, 
and  the  four  yellow  windows  of  the  hall  and  sit- 

;  ting-room,  which  she  had  lighted  against  her  late 

i  return. 

She  had  a  definite  sense  of  expectancy.  She 
was  going  back  to  something,  to  somebody  - 
and  found  herself  hurrying  almost  joyfully.  But 
with  her  hand  on  the  gate,  she  stopped,  and  stared 
at  the  house  as  if  it  were  strange  to  her.  Anjcy 
little  stream  flowed  suddenly  round  her  heart. 
For  a  second,  all  the  world  —  the  moon,  the  vil 
lage,  the  house,  and  her  own  inner  secret  uni 
verse  —  staggered  and  reeled  and  shook,  But  as 
suddenly,  everything  grew  calm  and  still  again. 
The  frightful  chill  melted  from  her  blood;  the 
moon  watched  her  with  the  same  high  virgin  re 
gard,  and  the  yellow  windows  beckoned  her  home. 
She  went  slowly  up  the  path  and  into  the  warm 
silent  hall. 

In  that  moment  at  the  gate,  she  had  realized 
that  it  was  only  Herself  to  whom  she  was  going 
back.  Herself,  who  made  those  windows  bright, 
who  piled  the  logs  on  the  hearth  that  now  she 
could  light  and  sit  by,  dreaming.  It -was  Herself, 
would  be  running  down  the  stairs  to  greet 

181 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

her,  and  fetching  an  apple  from  the  pantry,  and 
listening  to  her  story  of  the  evening's  doings. 

It  seemed  to  her  almost  as  if  she  had  become 
two  individuals.  One  of  her  went  out  into  the 
village  and  the  world.  The  other  stayed  always 
in  the  little  white  house.  She  would  always  be 
waiting  to  greet  her  home. 

That  was  all.  Now  that  she  understood  it,  it 
did  not  concern  her  any  more. 

She  was  becoming  a  good  hermit,  she  com 
mented;  but  noticed,  with  the  detachment  that 
had  grown  upon  her,  that  she  was  not  going  to  re 
member  that  shuddering  moment  at  the  gate.  She 
blew  the  fire  high,  thinking,  'After  all,  there  is  no 
body  but  Myself  who  understands  me  much/  and 
was  amused  at  her  simple  egotism. 

iv    / 

But  secretly  she  knew  her  most  perilous  enemy. 
It  was  not  sadness,  or  selfishness,  or  the  Voices, 
or  the  odd  wilderness  of  a,  determined  recluse.  It 
was  Eternity. 

There  was  no  tellirrg  when  Eternity  might  claim 
her.  Sometimes  sj?fe  awoke  at  dawn,  and  went 
down  into  the  de/vy  garden  to  work  among  the 
roses  and  iris  ancf  pansy  plants,  with  the  birds  all 
singing  and  the  gun  dancing  like  a  great  wise  morn 
ing  star.  The  day  wore  on,  as  she  digged  and 
transplanted  and  clipped  and  watered,  tHl,  weary 
a  little,  she  went  into  the  house  and  took  up  the 
endless  bit  £>f  sewing,  or  some  story  or  poem  to 

182 


^  STUDIES  IN  SOLITUDE 

y 

*~t  -r  finish.    And  all  at  once,  In  spite  of  the  sun,  the 

earth-smell,  the  brisk  village-sounds  beyond  her 

<  garden-fence,  she  knew  that  her  anchor  dragged, 

—"she  had  slipped  her  moorings  in  the  safe  har 

bor  of  Time,  and  was  drifting  off,  off  into  Eternity. 

.Then  she  cared  nothing  for  rose-bugs,  or  iris- 

roots,  or  stockings  to  darn,  or  stories  to  read.    She~ 

thought  'of  Love,  and  Sin,  and  Death;  of  nations 

at  war  and  her  friends'  souls  in  joy  or  agony,  of 

God_Himself  ,  —  and  they  were  all  as  nothing. 

rShe  saw  the  flickering  garden,  she  heard  the  spng- 

*  sparrow  and  the  clucking  hen,  ^he  felt  her  own 

scrubbed  and  earth-stained  fingers  and  her  beat 

ing  heart,  but  these  were  not  necessary  to  her. 

She  was  terribly  remote  ;  terribly  careless  and  still 

and  proud;  for  she  was  in  Eternity.  ~  .^ 

4  What  does  it  all  matter?'  she  would  murmur. 

'What  if  they  drink  and  steal  and  sin  and  die?  or 

love  and  lose  and  win  and  die  too?    And  what  of 

me?   What^ofme?  —  We  are  all  in  Eternity.  God 

Himself  is  in  Eternity.' 

But  she  kept  the  peril  close.     None  of  the 
neighbors,  who  hailed  her  on  the  street  &g~goggrped 
porth  ,  ever  noticed  that  often, 


as  she  talked,  she  would  clasp  her  hands  with  a 
sudden  fierce  little  gesture,  as  if  she  were  holding 
tight  to  some  strong  arm,  and  that  in  her  heart 
she  was  whispering,  even  while  the  swift  crooked 
smile  danced  across  her  lips,  'O  God,  make  me 
remember!  make  me  remember!  We're  in  Time 
now  :  not  in  Eternity  yet  :  not  in  Eternity  yet!  ' 


The  Greek  Genius 

By  John  Jay  Chapman 

THE  teasing  perfection  of  Greek  Literature  will 
perhaps  excite  the  world  long  after  modern  litera 
ture  is  forgotten.  Shakespeare  may  come  to  his 
end  and  lie  down  among  the  Egyptians,  but  Ho 
mer  will  endure  forever.  We  hate  to  imagine  such 
an  outcome  as  this,  because,  while  we  love  Shake 
speare,  we  regard  the  Greek  classics  merely  with 
an  overwhelmed  astonishment.  But  the  fact  is 
that  Homer  floats  in  the  central  stream  of  History, 
Shakespeare  in  an  eddy.  There  is,  too,  a  real  dif 
ference  between  ancient  and  modern  art,  and  the 
enduring  power  may  be  on  the  side  of  antiquity. 

The  classics  will  always  be  the  playthings  of  hu 
manity,  because  they  are  types  of  perfection,  like 
crystals.  They  are  pure  intellect,  like  demonstra 
tions  in  geometry.  Within  their  own  limitations 
they  are  examples  of  miracle;  and  the  modern 
world  has  nothing  to  show  that  resembles  them  in 
the  least.  As  no  builder  has  built  like  the  Greeks, 
so  no  writer  has  written  like  the  Greeks.  In  edge, 
in  delicacy,  in  proportion,  in  accuracy  of  effect, 
they  are  as  marble  to  our  sandstone.  The  perfec- 

184 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

tion  of  the  Greek  vehicle  is  what  attacks  the  mind 
of  the  modern  man  and  gives  him  dreams. 

What  relation  these  dreams  bear  to  Greek  feel 
ing  it  is  impossible  to  say  —  probably  a  very  re 
mote  and  grotesque  relation.  The  scholars  who 
devote  their  enormous  energies  to  a  life-and- 
death  struggle  to  understand  the  Greeks  always 
arrive  at  states  of  mind  which  are  peculiarly  mod 
ern.  The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  severest 
types  of  Biblical  scholar.  J.  B.  Strauss,  for  in 
stance,  gave  his  life  to  the  study  of  Christ,  and, 
as  a  result,  has  left  an  admirable  picture  of  the 
German  mind  of  1850.  Goethe,  who  was  on  his 
guard  if  ever  a  man  could  be,  was  still  a  little 
deceived  in  thinking  that  the  classic  spirit  could 
be  recovered.  He  left  imitations  of  Greek  litera 
ture  which  are  admirable  in  themselves,  and  rank 
among  his  most  characteristic  works,  yet  which 
bear  small  resemblance  to  the  originals.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  Milton  and  of  Racine.  The 
Greeks  seem  to  have  used  their  material,  their 
myths  and  ideas,  with  such  supernal  intellect  that 
they  leave  this  material  untouched  for  the  next 
comer.  Their  gods  persist,  their  mythology  is 
yours  and  mine.  We  accept  the  toys, — the  whole 
baby-house  which  has  come  down  to  us :  we  walk 
in  and  build  our  own  dramas  with  their  blocks. 

What  a  man  thinks  of  influences  him,  though 
he  chance  to  know  little  about  it;  and  the  power 
which  the  ancient  world  has  exerted  over  the  mod 
ern  has  not  been  shown  in  proportion  to  the  knowl- 

185 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

edge  or  scholarship  of  the  modern  thinker,  but  in 
proportion  to  his  natural  force.  The  Greek  tradi 
tion,  the  Greek  idea  became  an  element  in  all  sub 
sequent  life;  and  one  can  no  more  dig  it  out  and 
isolate  it  than  one  can  dig  out  or  isolate  a  prop 
erty  of  the  blood.  We  do  not  know  exactly  how 
much  we  owe  to  the  Greeks.  Keats  was  inspired 
by  the  very  idea  of  them.  They  were  an  obses 
sion  to  Dante,  who  knew  not  the  language.  Their 
achievements  have  been  pressing  in  upon  the 
mind  of  Europe,  and  enveloping  it  with  an  atmos 
pheric  appeal,  ever  since  the  Dark  Ages. 

Of  late  years  we  have  come  to  think  of  all  sub 
jects  as  mere  departments  of  science,  and  we  are 
almost  ready  to  hand  over  Greece  to  the  special 
ist.  We  assume  that  scholars  will  work  out  the 
history  of  art.  But  it  is  not  the  right  of  the 
learned  and  scholarly  only,  to  be  influenced  by  the 
Greeks,  but  also  of  those  persons  who  know  no 
Greek.  Greek  influence  is  too  universal  an  in 
heritance  to  be  entrusted  to  scholars,  and  the  spe 
cialist  is  the  very  last  man  who  can  understand  it. 
In  order  to  obtain  a  diagnosis  of  Greek  influence 
one  would  have  to  seek  out  a  sort  of  specialist  on 
Humanity-at-large. 


Since  we  cannot  find  any  inspired  teacher  to  lay 
before  us  the  secrets  of  Greek  influence,  the  next 
best  thing  would  be  to  go  directly  to  the  Greeks 
themselves,  and  to  study  their  works  freshly,  al- 

186 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

most  innocently.  But  to  do  this  is  not  easy.  The 
very  Greek  texts  themselves  have  been  established 
through  modern  research,  and  the  footnotes  are 
the  essence  of  modernity. 

The  rushing  modern  world  passes  like  an  ex 
press  train ;  as  it  goes,  it  holds  up  a  mirror  to  the 
classic  world  —  a  mirror  ever  changing  and  ever 
false.  For  upon  the  face  of  the  mirror  rests  the 
lens  of  fleeting  fashion.  We  can  no  more  walk 
straight  to  the  Greeks  than  wre  can  walk  straight 
to  the  moon.  In  America  the  natural  road  to  the 
classics  lies  through  the  introductions  of  German 
and  English  scholarship.  We  are  met,  as  it  were, 
on  the  threshold  of  Greece  by  guides  who  address 
us  confidently  in  two  very  dissimilar  modern 
idioms,  and  who  overwhelm  us  with  complacent 
and  voluble  instructions.  According  to  these  men 
we  have  nothing  to  do  but  listen  to  them,  if  we 
would  understand  Greece. 

Before  entering  upon  the  subject  of  Greece,  let 
us  cast  a  preliminary  and  disillusioning  glance 
upon  our  two  guides,  the  German  and  the  Briton. 
Let  us  look  once  at  each  of  them  with  an  intelli 
gent  curiosity,  so  that  we  may  understand  what 
manner  of  men  they  are,  and  can  make  allow 
ances  in  receiving  the  valuable  and  voluble  as 
sistance  which  they  keep  whispering  into  our  ears 
throughout  the  tour.  The  guides  are  indispen 
sable  ;  but  this  need  not  prevent  us  from  studying 
their  temperaments.  If  it  be  true  that  modern 
scholarship  acts  as  a  lens  through  which  the  classics 

187 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

are  to  be  viewed,  we  can  never  hope  to  get  rid  of 
all  the  distortions;  but  we  may  make  scientific 
allowances,  and  may  correct  results.  We  may 
consider  certain  social  laws  of  refraction — for 
example,  spectacles,  beer,  sausages.  We  may  re 
gard  the  variations  of  the  compass  due  to  certain 
local  customs,  namely,  the  Anglican  communion, 
school  honor,  Pears*  soap.  In  all  this  we  sin  not, 
but  pursue  intellectual  methods. 

The  case  of  Germany  illustrates  the  laws  of  re 
fraction  very  pleasantly.  The  extraordinary 
lenses  which  were  made  there  in  the  nineteenth 
century  are  famous  now,  and  will  remain  as  curi 
osities  hereafter.  During  the  last  century,  Learn 
ing  won  the  day  in  Germany  to  an  extent  never 
before  known  in  history.  It  became  an  unwritten 
law  of  the  land  that  none  but  learned  men  should 
be  allowed  to  play  with  pebbles.  If  a  man  had 
been  through  the  mill  of  the  Doctorate,  however, 
he  received  a  certificate  as  a  dreamer.  The  pas 
sion  which  mankind  has  for  using  its  imagination 
could  thus  be  gratified  only  by  men  who  had  been 
brilliant  scholars.  The  result  was  a  race  of  mon 
sters,  of  whom  Nietzsche  is  the  greatest. 

The  early  social  life  of  these  men  was  con 
tracted.  They  learned  all  they  knew  while  sit 
ting  on  a  bench.  The  classroom  was  their  road  to 
glory.  They  were  aware  that  they  could  not  be 
allowed  to  go  out  and  play  in  the  open  until  they 
had  learned  their  lessons  thoroughly ;  they  there 
fore  became  prize  boys.  When  the  great  freedom 

188 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

was  at  last  conferred  upon  them,  they  roamed 
through  Greek  mythology,  and  all  other  mythol 
ogies,  and  erected  labyrinths  in  which  the  passions 
of  childhood  may  be  seen  gamboling  with  the  dis 
coveries  of  adult  miseducation.  The  gravity 
with  which  the  pundits  treated  each  other  ex 
tended  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  because,  in  the  first 
place,  they  were  more  learned  than  any  one  else, 
and  in  the  second,  many  of  them  were  men  of 
genius.  The  'finds'  of  modern  archaeology  have 
passed  through  the  hands  of  these  men,  and  have 
received  from  them  the  labels  of  current  classifi 
cation. 

After  all,  these  pundits  resemble  their  predeces 
sors  in  learning.  Scholarship  is  always  a  special 
ized  matter,  and  it  must  be  learned  as  we  learn  a 
game.  Scholarship  always  wears  the  parade  of 
finality,  and  yet  suffers  changes  like  the  moon. 
These  particular  scholars  are  merely  scholars. 
Their  errors  are  only  the  errorsof  scholarship,  due, 
for  the  most  part,  to  extravagance  and  ambition. 
A  new  idea  about  Hellas  meant  a  new  reputation. 
In  default  of  such  an  idea  a  man's  career  is  man- 
quee;  he  is  not  an  intellectual.  After  discounting 
ambition,  we  have  left  still  another  cause  for  dis 
trusting  the  labors  of  the  German  professors.  This 
distrust  arises  from  a  peep  into  the  social  sur 
roundings  of  the  caste.  Here  is  a  great  authority 
on  the  open-air  life  of  the  Greeks:  he  knows  all 
about  Hellenic  sport.  Here  is  another  who  under 
stands  the  brilliant  social  life  of  Attica:  he  has 

189 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

written  the  best  book  upon  Athenian  conversa 
tion  and  the  market-place.  Here  is  still  a  third : 
he  has  reconstructed  Greek  religion:  at  last  we 
know!  All  these  miracles  of  learning  have  been 
accomplished  in  the  library  —  without  athletics, 
without  conversation,  without  religion. 

When  I  think  of  Greek  civilization,  —  of  the 
swarming,  thieving,  clever,  gleaming-eyed  Greeks, 
of  the  Bay  of  Salamis,  and  of  the  Hermes  of 
Praxiteles,  —  and  then  cast  my  eyes  on  the  Great 
est  Authority,  my  guide,  my  Teuton  master,  with 
his  barbarian  babble  and  his  ham-bone  and  his 
self-importance,  I  begin  to  wonder  whether  I  can 
not  somehow  get  rid  of  the  man  and  leave  him 
behind.  Alas,  we  cannot  do  that;  we  can  only 
remember  his  traits. 

Our  British  mentors,  who  flank  the  German 
scholars  as  we  move  gently  forward  toward  Greek 
feeling,  form  so  complete  a  contrast  to  the  Teu 
tons  that  we  hardly  believe  that  both  kinds  can 
represent  genuine  scholarship.  The  Britons  are 
gentlemen,  afternoon  callers,  who  eat  small  cakes, 
row  on  the  Thames,  and  are  all  for  morality.  They 
are  men  of  letters.  They  write  in  prose  and  in 
verse,  and  belong  to  the  aesthetic  fraternity. 
They,  like  the  Teutons,  are  attached  to  institu 
tions  of  learning,  namely,  to  Oxford  and  Cam 
bridge.  They  resemble  the  Germans,  however, 
in  but  a  single  trait  —  the  conviction  that  they 
understand  Greece 

The  thesis  of  the  British  belle-lettrists,  to  which 

190 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

they  devote  their  energies,  might  be  stated  thus: 
British  culture  includes  Greek  culture.  They  are 
very  modern,  very  English,  very  sentimental, 
these  British  scholars.  While  the  German  Doc 
tors  use  Greek  as  a  stalking-horse  for  Teutonic 
psychology,  these  English  gentlemen  use  it  as  a 
dressmaker's  model  upon  which  they  exhibit 
home-made  English  lyrics  and  British  stock  mo 
rality.  The  lesson  which  Browning  sees  in  Alcestis 
is  the  same  that  he  gave  us  in  James  Lee's  Wife. 
Browning's  appeal  is  always  the  appeal  to  robust 
feeling  as  the  salvation  of  the  world.  Gilbert 
Murray,  on  the  other  hand,  sheds  a  sad,  clinging, 
Tennysonian  morality  over  Dionysus.  Jowett  is 
happy  to  announce  that  Plato  is  theologically 
sound,  and  gives  him  a  ticket-of -leave  to  walk 
anywhere  in  England.  Swinburne  clings  to  that 
belief  in  sentiment  which  marks  the  Victorian 
era,  but  Swinburne  finds  the  key  to  life  in  un 
restraint  instead  of  in  restraint. 

There  is  a  whole  school  of  limp  Grecism  in  Eng 
land,  which  has  grown  up  out  of  Keats' s  Grecian 
Urn,  and  which  is  now  buttressed  with  philosophy 
and  adorned  with  scholarship;  and  no  doubt  it 
does  bear  some  sort  of  relation  to  Greece  and  to 
Greek  life.  But  this  Anglican  Grecism  has  the 
quality  which  all  modern  British  art  exhibits, 
—  the  very  quality  which  the  Greeks  could  not 
abide,  —  it  is  tinged  with  excess.  The  Briton 
likes  strong  flavors.  He  likes  them  in  his  tea,  in 
his  port  wine,  in  his  concert-hall  songs,  in  his  pic- 

191 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

tures  of  home  and  farm  life.  He  likes  something 
unmistakable,  something  with  a  smack  that  lets 
you  know  that  the  thing  has  arrived.  In  his 
literature  he  is  the  same.  Dickens,  Carlyle,  Tenny 
son  lay  it  on  thick  with  sentiment.  Keats  drips 
with  aromatic  poetry,  which  has  a  wonder  and  a 
beauty  of  its  own  —  and  whose  striking  quality  is 
excess.  The  scented,  wholesale  sweetness  of  the 
modern  aesthetic  school  in  England  goes  home 
to  its  admirers  because  it  is  easy  art.  Once  enjoy 
a  bit  of  it  and  you  never  forget  it.  It  is  always 
the  same,  the  'old  reliable,'  the  Oxford  brand, 
the  true,  safe,  British,  patriotic,  moral,  noble 
school  of  verse;  which  exhibits  the  manners  and 
feelings  of  a  gentleman,  and  has  success  written 
in  every  trait  of  its  physiognomy. 

How  this  school  of  poetry  invaded  Greece  is 
part  of  the  history  of  British  expansion  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  In  the  Victorian  era  the 
Englishman  brought  cricket  and  morning  prayers 
into  South  Africa.  Robert  Browning  established 
himself  and  his  carpet-bag  in  comfortable  lodg 
ings  on  the  Acropolis  —  which  he  spells  with  a  K 
to  show  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  recent  re 
search.  It  must  be  confessed  that  Robert  Brown 
ing's  view  of  Greece  never  pleased,  even  in  Eng 
land.  It  was  too  obviously  R.  B.  over  again.  It 
was  Pippa  and  Bishop  Blougram  with  a  few  pome 
granate  seeds  and  unexpected  orthographies 
thrown  in.  The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  is 
against  it,  and  suggests,  wittily  enough,  that  one 

192 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

can  hardly  agree  with  Browning  that  Heracles  got 
drunk  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  up  other  people's 
spirits. 

So,  also,  Edward  FitzGerald  was  never  taken 
seriously  by  the  English ;  but  this  was  for  another 
reason.  His  translations  are  the  best  transcrip 
tions  from  the  Greek  ever  done  by  this  British 
school;  but  FitzGerald  never  took  himself  seri 
ously.  I  believe  that  if  he  had  only  been  ambi 
tious,  and  had  belonged  to  the  academic  classes, 
—  like  Jowett  for  instance,  —  he  could  have  got 
Oxford  behind  him,  and  we  should  all  have  been 
obliged  to  regard  him  as  a  great  apostle  of  Hel 
lenism.  But  he  was  a  poor-spirited  sort  of  man, 
and  never  worked  up  his  lead. 

Matthew  Arnold,  on  the  other  hand,  began  the 
serious  profession  of  being  a  Grecian.  He  took  it 
up  when  there  was  nothing  in  it,  and  he  developed 
a  little  sect  of  his  own,  out  of  which  later  came 
Swinburne  and  Gilbert  Murray,  each  of  whom  is 
the  true  British  article.  While  Swinburne  is  by 
far  the  greater  poet,  Murray  is  by  far  the  more  im 
portant  of  the  two  from  the  ethnological  point  of 
view.  Murray  was  the  first  man  to  talk  boldly 
about  God,  and  to  introduce  his  name  into  all 
Greek  myths,  using  it  as  a  fair  translation  of  any 
Greek  adjective.  There  is  a  danger  in  this  bold 
ness.  The  reader's  attention  becomes  hypnotized 
with  wondering  in  what  manner  God  is  to  be  in 
troduced  into  the  next  verse.  The  reader  becomes 
so  concerned  about  Mr.  Murray's  religious  ob- 

193 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

sessions  that  he  forgets  the  Greek  altogether  and 
remembers  only  Shakespeare's  hostess  in  her  dis 
tress  over  the  dying  Falstaff:  'Now  I,  to  comfort 
him,  bid  him  'a  should  not  think  of  God,  —  I 
hoped  there  was  no  need  to  trouble  himself  with 
any  such  thoughts  yet. ' 

Murray  and  Arnold  are  twins  in  ethical  en 
deavor.  I  think  that  it  was  Arnold  who  first  told 
the  British  that  Greece  was  noted  for  melancholy 
and  for  longings.  He  told  them  that  chastity, 
temperance,  nudity,  and  a  wealth  of  moral  rhet 
oric  marked  the  young  man  of  the  Periclean  pe 
riod.  Even  good  old  Dean  Plumptre  has  put  this 
young  man  into  his  prefaces.  Swinburne  added 
the  hymeneal  note,  —  the  poetic  nature-view,  - 
of  which  the  following  may  serve  as  an  example :  — 

And  the  trees  in  their  season  brought  forth  and  were  kindled 

anew 
By  the  warmth  of  the  mixture  of  marriage,  the  child-bearing 

dew. 

There  is  hardly  a  page  in  Swinburne's  Helleniz- 
ing  verse  that  does  not  blossom  with  Hymen. 
The  passages  would  be  well  suited  for  use  in  the 
public  schools  of  to-day  where  sex-knowledge  in 
its  poetic  aspects  is  beginning  to  be  judiciously 
introduced. 

This  contribution  of  Swinburne's,  —  the  hy 
meneal  touch,  —  and  Murray's  discovery  that 
the  word  God  could  be  introduced  with  effect 
anywhere,  went  like  wildfire  over  England.  They 

194 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

are  characteristic  of  the  latest  phase  of  Anglo- 
Grecism. 

Gilbert  Murray  has,  in  late  years,  had  the  field 
to  himself.  He  stands  as  the  head  and  front  of 
Greek  culture  in  England.  It  is  he,  more  than  any 
one  else,  who  is  the  figure-head  of  dramatic  poetry 
in  England  to-day;  and,  as  such,  his  influence 
must  be  met,  and  as,  it  were,  passed  through,  by 
the  American  student  who  is  studying  the  Greek 
classics. 

II 

The  Greek  genius  is  so  different  from  the  mod 
ern  English  genius  that  they  cannot  understand 
each  other.  How  shall  we  come  to  see  this  clearly  ? 
The  matter  is  difficult  in  the  extreme;  because 
we  are  all  soaked  in  modern  feeling,  and  in 
America  we  are  all  drenched  in  British  influence. 
The  desire  of  Britain  to  annex  ancient  Greece, 
the  deep-felt  need  that  the  English  writers  and 
poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  have  shown  to 
edge  and  nudge  nearer  to  Greek  feeling,  is  famil 
iar  to  all  of  us.  Swinburne  expresses  his  Hellenic 
longings  by  his  hymeneal  strains,  Matthew  Ar 
nold  by  sweetness  and  light,  Gilbert  Murray  by 
sweetness  and  pathos  —  and  all  through  the 
divine  right  of  Victorian  expansion.  It  has  been 
a  profoundly  unconscious  development  in  all 
these  men.  They  have  instinctively  and  inno 
cently  attached  their  little  oil-can  to  the  coat- 
tails  of  Euripides  and  of  the  other  great  Attic 

195 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

writers.  They  have  not  been  interested  in  Greek 
for  its  own  sake.  They  have  been  interested  in 
the  exploitations  of  Greece  for  the  purpose  of 
British  consumption. 

Some  people  will  contend  that  none  of  the 
writers  of  this  school  are,  properly  speaking,  pro 
fessional  scholars.  Others  will  contend  that  pro 
fessional  scholarship  is  tolerable  only  because  it 
tends  to  promote  cultivation  of  a  non-professional 
kind.  For  instance,  Jowett  was  never  regarded 
as  a  scholar  by  the  darkest-dyed  Oxford  experts, 
and  Jebb  of  Cambridge  is  undoubtedly  regarded 
as  an  amateur  in  Germany,  because  he  descends 
to  making  translations.  The  severest  classicist  is 
able  to  talk  only  about  texts.  He  is  too  great  to 
do  anything  else.  And  yet,  properly  speaking, 
these  men  are  all  scholars.  Murray  represents 
popular  scholarship  to  a  degree  which  would  have 
shocked  Matthew  Arnold,  just  as  Arnold  himself 
would  have  been  poison  to  Nauck  —  Nauck  the 
author  of  the  text  of  Euripides. 

But  they  are  all  scholars,  and  Murray,  who  is  an 
Australian,  and  who  rose  into  University  promi 
nence  on  the  wings  of  University  Extension,  and 
through  his  lyric  gift  rather  than  through  his 
learning,  belongs  to  Oxford  by  race  and  by  nature, 
as  well  as  by  adoption.  The  outsider  ought  not  to 
confuse  him  with  the  whole  of  Oxford,  and  the 
whole  of  Oxford  ought  not  to  disown  him  after 
making  him  the  head  and  front  of  its  Hellenism 
so  far  as  the  world  at  large  can  judge.  Murray, 

196 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

as  St.  Paul  would  say,  is  not  the  inner  Oxford; 
but  Murray  is  the  outer  Oxford  which  the  inner 
Oxford  cannot  too  eagerly  sniff  at  or  condemn; 
because  he  is  no  accident,  but  a  true-bred  Oxo 
nian  of  the  Imperial  epoch. 

The  tendency  of  universities  has  ever  been  to 
breed  cliques  and  secret  societies,  to  produce  em 
broideries  and  start  hothouses  of  specialized  feel 
ing.  They  do  well  in  doing  this:  it  is  all  they  can 
do.  We  should  look  upon  them  as  great  furnaces 
of  culture,  largely  social  in  their  influence,  which 
warm  and  nourish  the  general  temperament  of  a 
nation.  Would  that  in  America  we  had  a  local 
school  of  classic  cultivation  half  as  interesting  as 
this  Oxford  Movement  —  quaint  and  non-intel 
lectual  as  it  is !  It  is  alive  and  it  is  national.  While 
most  absurd  from  the  point  of  view  of  universal 
culture,  it  is  most  satisfactory  from  the  domestic 
point  of  view  —  as  indeed  everything  in  England 
is.  If  in  America  we  ever  develop  any  true  uni 
versities,  they  will  have  faults  of  their  own.  Their 
defects  will  be  of  a  new  strain,  no  doubt,  and 
will  reflect  our  national  shortcomings.  These 
thoughts  but  teach  us  that  we  cannot  use  other 
people's  eyes  or  other  people's  eye-glasses.  We 
have  still  to  grind  the  lenses  through  which  we 
shall,  in  our  turn,  observe  the  classics. 

Ill 

Ancient  religion  is  of  all  subjects  in  the  world 
the  most  difficult.  Every  religion,  even  at  the 

197 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

time  it  was  in  progress,  was  always  completely 
misunderstood,  and  the  misconceptions  have  in 
creased  with  the  ages.  They  multiply  with  every 
monument  that  is  unearthed.  If  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries  were  going  at  full  blast  to-day,  so  that 
we  could  attend  them,  as  we  do  the  play  at  Ober- 
ammergau,  their  interpretation  would  still  present 
difficulties.  Mommsen  and  Rhode  would  dis 
agree.  But  ten  thousand  years  from  now,  when 
nothing  survives  except  a  line  out  of  St.  John's 
Gospel  and  a  tablet  stating  that  Fischer  played 
the  part  of  Christ  for  three  successive  decades, 
many  authoritative  books  will  be  written  about 
Oberammergau,  and  reputations  will  be  made 
over  it.  Anything  which  we  approach  as  religion 
becomes  a  nightmare  of  suggestion,  and  hales  us 
hither  and  thither  with  thoughts  beyond  the 
reaches  of  the  soul. 

The  Alcestis  and  the  Bacchantes  are,  in  this 
paper,  approached  with  the  idea  that  they  are 
plays.  This  seems  not  to  have  been  done  often 
enough  with  Greek  plays.  They  are  regarded  as 
examples  of  the  sublime,  as  forms  of  philosophic 
thought,  as  moral  essays,  as  poems,  even  as  illus 
trations  of  dramatic  law,  and  they  are  unquestion 
ably  all  of  these  things.  But  they  were  primarily 
plays  —  intended  to  pass  the  time  and  exhilarate 
the  emotions.  They  came  into  being  as  plays, 
and  their  form  and  make-up  can  best  be  under 
stood  by  a  study  of  the  dramatic  business  in  them. 
They  become  poems  and  philosophy  incidentally, 

198 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

and  afterwards :  they  were  born  as  plays.  A  play 
wright  is  always  an  entertainer,  and  unless  his 
desire  to  hold  his  audience  overpoweringly  pre 
dominates,  he  will  never  be  a  success.  It  is  prob 
able  that  even  with  ^schylus,  —  who  stands  hors 
ligne  as  the  only  playwright  in  history  who  was 
really  in  earnest  about  morality,  —  we  should 
have  to  confess  that  his  passion  as  a  dramatic 
artist  came  first.  He  held  his  audiences  by  strokes 
of  tremendous  dramatic  novelty.  Both  the  stage 
traditions  and  the  plays  themselves  bear  this  out. 
The  fact  is  that  it  is  not  easy  to  keep  people  sit 
ting  in  a  theatre ;  and  unless  the  idea  of  holding 
their  attention  predominates  with  the  author, 
they  will  walk  out,  and  he  will  not  be  able  to  de 
liver  the  rest  of  his  story. 

In  the  grosser  forms  of  dramatic  amusement  — 
for  example,  where  a  bicycle  acrobat  is  followed 
by  a  comic  song  —  we  are  not  compelled  to  find 
philosophic  depth  of  idea  in  the  sequence.  But 
in  dealing  with  works  of  great  and  refined  dra 
matic  genius  like  the  Tempest,  or  the  Bacchantes, 
where  the  emotions  played  upon  are  subtly  inter 
woven,  there  will  always  be  found  certain  minds 
which  remain  unsatisfied  with  the  work  of  art  it 
self,  but  must  have  it  explained.  Even  Bee 
thoven's  Sonatas  have  been  supplied  with  phil 
osophic  addenda  —  statements  of  their  meaning. 
We  know  how  much  Shakespeare's  intentions 
used  to  puzzle  the  Germans.  Men  feel  that  some 
where  at  the  back  of  their  own  consciousness 

199 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

there  is  a  philosophy  or  a  religion  with  which  the 
arts  have  some  relation.  In  so  far  as  these  affini 
ties  are  touched  upon  in  a  manner  that  leaves 
them  mysteries,  we  have  good  criticism ;  but  when 
people  dogmatize  about  them,  we  have  bad  criti 
cism.  In  the  meantime  the  great  artist  goes  his 
way.  His  own  problems  are  enough  for  him. 

The  early  critics  were  puzzled  to  classify  the 
Alcestis,  and  no  wonder,  for  it  contains  many 
varieties  of  dramatic  writing.  For  this  very  rea 
son  it  is  a  good  play  to  take  as  a  sample  of  Greek 
spirit  and  Greek  workmanship.  It  is  a  little 
Greek  cosmos,  and  it  happens  to  depict  a  side  of 
Greek  thought  which  is  sympathetic  to  modern 
sentiment,  so  that  we  seem  to  be  at  home  in  its 
atmosphere.  The  Alcestis  is  thought  to  be  in  a 
class  by  itself.  And  yet,  indeed,  under  close 
examination,  every  Greek  play  falls  into  a  class 
by  itself  (there  are  only  about  forty-five  of  them 
in  all) ,  and  the  maker  of  each  was  probably  more 
concerned  at  the  time  with  the  dramatic  experi 
ment  upon  which  he  found  himself  launched  than 
he  was  with  any  formal  classification  which  pos 
terity  might  assign  to  his  play. 

In  the  Alcestis  Euripides  made  one  of  the  best 
plays  in  the  world,  full  of  true  pathos,  full  of  jovial 
humor,  both  of  which  sometimes  verge  upon  the 
burlesque.  The  happy  ending  is  understood  from 
the  start,  and  none  of  the  grief  is  painful.  Alces 
tis  herself  is  the  good-wife  of  Greek  household 
myth,  who  is  ready  to  die  for  her  husband.  To 

200 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

this  play  the  bourgeois  takes  his  half-grown  fam 
ily.  He  rejoices  when  he  hears  that  it  is  to  be 
given.  The  absurdities  of  the  fairy-tale  are  ac 
cepted  simply.  Heracles  has  his  club,  Death  his 
sword,  Apollo  his  lyre.  The  women  wail,  Adme- 
tus  whines;  there  is  buffoonery,  there  are  tears, 
there  is  wit,  there  is  conventional  wrangling,  and 
that  word-chopping  so  dear  to  the  Mediterra 
nean  theatre,  which  exists  in  all  classic  drama 
and  survives  in  the  Punch  and  Judy  show  of  to 
day.  And  there  is  the  charming  return  of  Her 
acles  with  the  veiled  lady  whom  he  presents  to 
Admetus  as  a  slave  for  safe  keeping,  whom 
Admetus  refuses  to  receive  for  conventional  rea 
sons,  but  whom  every  child  in  the  audience  feels 
to  be  the  real  Alcestis,  even  before  Heracles  un 
veils  her  and  gives  her  back  into  her  husband's 
bosom  with  speeches  on  both  sides  that  are  like 
the  closing  music  of  a  dream. 

The  audience  disperses  at  the  close,  feeling 
that  it  has  spent  a  happy  hour.  No  sonata  of 
Mozart  is  more  completely  beautiful  than  the 
Alcestis.  No  comedy  of  Shakespeare  approaches 
it  in  perfection.  The  merit  of  the  piece  lies,  not 
in  any  special  idea  it  conveys,  but  entirely  in  the 
manner  in  which  everything  is  carried  out. 

IV 

It  is  clear  at  a  glance  that  the  Alcestis  belongs 
to  an  epoch  of  extreme  sophistication.  Every 
thing  has  been  thought  out  and  polished;  every 

201 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ornament  is  a  poem.  If  a  character  has  to  give 
five  words  of  explanation  or  of  prayer,  it  is  done 
in  silver.  The  tone  is  all  the  tone  of  cultivated 
society,  the  appeal  is  an  appeal  to  the  refined, 
casuistical  intelligence.  The  smile  of  Voltaire  is 
all  through  Greek  literature ;  and  it  was  not  until 
the  age  of  Louis  XIV,  or  the  Regency,  that  the 
modern  world  was  again  to  know  a  refinement 
and  a  sophistication  which  recall  the  Greek  work. 
Now,  in  one  word,  —  this  subtlety  which  pleases 
us  in  matters  of  sentiment  is  the  very  thing  that 
separates  us  from  the  Greek  upon  the  profound- 
est  questions  of  philosophy.  Where  religious  or 
metaphysical  truth  is  touched  upon,  either  Greek 
sophistication  carries  us  off  our  feet  with  a  rap 
ture  which  has  no  true  relation  to  the  subject,  or 
else  we  are  offended  by  it.  We  do  not  understand 
sophistication.  The  Greek  has  pushed  aesthetic 
analysis  further  than  the  modern  can  bear.  We 
follow  well  enough  through  the  light  issues,  but 
when  the  deeper  questions  are  reached  we  lose  our 
footing.  At  this  point  the  modern  cries  out  in  ap 
plause,  'Religion,  philosophy,  pure  feeling,  the 
soul!'-  -He  cries  out,  'Mystic  cult,  Asiatic  in 
fluence,  Nature  worship,  —  deep  things  over 
there ! '  —  Or  else  he  cries, '  What  amazing  cruelty, 
what  cynicism!'  And  yet  it  is  none  of  these 
things,  but  only  the  artistic  perfection  of  the  work 
which  is  moving  us.  We  are  the  victims  of  clever 
stage-management. 

The  cruder  intelligence  is  ever  compelled  to  re- 

202 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

gard  the  man  of  complex  mind  as  a  priest  or  as  a 
demon.  The  child,  for  instance,  asks  about  the 
character  in  a  story,  *  But  is  he  a  good  man  or  a 
bad  man,  papa?'  The  child  must  have  a  moral 
explanation  of  anything  which  is  beyond  his  aes 
thetic  comprehension.  So  also  does  the  modern 
intelligence  question  the  Greek. 

The  matter  is  complicated  by  yet  another  ele 
ment,  namely  stage  convention.  Our  modern 
stage  is  so  different  from  the  classic  stage  that  we 
are  bad  judges  of  the  Greek  playwright's  inten 
tions.  The  quarrels  which  arise  as  to  allegorical 
or  secondary  meanings  in  a  work  of  art  are  gen 
erally  connected  with  some  unfamiliar  feature  of 
its  setting.  A  great  light  is  thrown  upon  any 
work  of  art  when  we  show  how  its  form  came  into 
being,  and  thus  explain  its  primary  meaning. 
Such  an  exposition  of  the  primary  or  apparent 
meaning  is  often  sufficient  to  put  all  secondary 
meanings  out  of  court.  For  instance:  It  is,  as  we 
know,  the  Germans  who  have  found  in  Shake 
speare  a  coherent  philosophic  intention.  They 
think  that  he  wrote  plays  for  the  purpose  of  stat 
ing  metaphysical  truths.  The  Englishman  does 
not  believe  this,  because  the  Englishman  is 
familiar  with  that  old  English  stage  work.  He 
knows  its  traditions,  its  preoccupation  with  story 
telling,  its  mundane  character,  its  obliviousness  to 
the  sort  of  thing  that  Germany  has  in  mind.  The 
Englishman  knows  the  conventions  of  his  own 

203 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

stage,  and  this  protects  him  from  finding  mares' - 
nests  in  Shakespeare.  Again,  Shakespeare's  son 
nets  used  to  be  a  favorite  field  for  mystical  ex 
egesis,  until  Sir  Sidney  Lee  explained  their  form 
by  reference  to  the  sixteenth-century  sonnet  liter 
ature  of  the  continent.  This  put  to  flight  many 
theories. 

In  other  words,  the  appeal  to  convention  is  the 
first  duty  of  the  scholar.  But,  unfortunately,  in 
regard  to  the  conventions  of  the  Classic  Stage, 
the  moderns  are  all  in  the  dark.  Nothing  like 
that  stage  exists  to-day.  We  are  obliged  to  make 
guesses  as  to  its  intentions,  its  humor,  its  relation 
to  philosophy.  If  the  classics  had  only  possessed 
a  cabinet-sized  drama,  like  our  own,  we  might 
have  been  at  home  there.  But  this  giant-talk, 
this  megaphone-and-buskin  method,  offers  us  a 
problem  in  dynamics  which  staggers  the  imagina 
tion.  All  we  can  do  is  to  tread  lightly  and  guess 
without  dogmatizing.  The  typical  Athenian,  Eu 
ripides,  was  so  much  deeper-dyed  in  skepticism 
than  any  one  since  that  day,  that  really  no  one 
has  ever  lived  who  could  cross-question  him  - 
let  alone  expound  the  meanings  of  his  plays.  In 
reading  Euripides,  we  find  ourselves,  at  moments, 
ready  to  classify  him  as  a  satirist,  and  at  other 
moments  as  a  man  of  feeling.  Of  course  he  was 
both.  Sometimes  he  seems  like  a  religious  man, 
and  again,  like  a  charlatan.  Of  course  he  was 
neither.  He  was  a  playwright. 

204 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 


The  Bacchantes,  like  every  other  Greek  play,  is 
the  result,  first,  of  the  legend,  second,  of  the 
theatre.  There  is  always  some  cutting  and  hack 
ing,  due  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  the  legend  in 
to  the  building.  Legends  differ  as  to  their  dra 
matic  possibilities,  and  the  incidents  which  are  to 
be  put  on  the  stage  must  be  selected  by  the  poet. 
The  site  of  the  play  must  be  fixed.  Above  all,  a 
Chorus  must  be  arranged  for. 

The  choosing  of  a  Chorus  is  indeed  one  of  the 
main  problems  of  the  tragedian.  If  he  can  hit  on 
a  natural  sort  of  Chorus  he  is  a  made  man.  In 
the  Alcestis  we  saw  that  the  whole  background  of 
grief  and  wailing  was  one  source  of  the  charm  of 
the  play.  Not  only  are  the  tragic  parts  deepened, 
but  the  gayer  scenes  are  set  off  by  this  feature. 
If  the  fable  provides  no  natural  and  obvious 
Chorus,  the  playwright  must  bring  his  Chorus  on 
the  stage  by  stretching  the  imagination  of  the 
audience.  He  employs  a  group  of  servants  or  of 
friends  of  the  hero;  if  the  play  is  a  marine  piece, 
he  uses  sailors.  The  whole  atmosphere  of  his  play 
depends  upon  the  happiness  of  his  choice. 

In  the  Agamemnon  'the  old  men  left-at-home' 
form  the  Chorus.  There  is  enough  dramatic 
power  in  this  one  idea  to  carry  a  play.  It  is  so 
natural :  the  old  men  are  on  the  spot ;  they  are  in 
terested  ;  they  are  the  essence  of  the  story,  and  yet 
external  to  it.  These  old  men  are,  indeed,  the 

205 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

archetype  of  all  choruses  —  a  collection  of  by 
standers,  a  sort  of  little  dummy  audience,  in 
tended  to  steer  the  great,  real  audience  into  a 
comprehension  of  the  play. 

The  Greek  dramatist  found  this  very  useful 
machine,  the  Chorus,  at  his  elbow;  but  he  was, 
on  the  other  hand,  greatly  controlled  by  it.  It 
had  ways  of  its  own :  it  inherited  dramatic  neces 
sities.  The  element  of  convention  and  of  theatri 
cal  usage  is  so  very  predominant  in  the  handling 
of  Greek  choruses  by  the  poets,  that  we  have  in 
chorus-work  something  that  may  be  regarded  al 
most  as  a  constant  quality.  By  studying  cho 
ruses  one  can  arrive  at  an  idea  of  the  craft  of  Greek 
play -writing  —  one  can  even  separate  the  con 
ventional  from  the  personal  to  some  extent. 

The  Greek  Chorus  has  no  mind  of  its  own;  it 
merely  gives  echo  to  the  last  dramatic  thought. 
It  goes  forward  and  back,  contradicts  itself,  sym 
pathizes  with  all  parties  or  none,  and  lives  in  a 
limbo.  Its  real  function  is  to  represent  the  slow- 
minded  man  in  the  audience.  It  does  what  he 
does,  it  interjects  questions  and  doubts,  it  delays 
the  plot  and  indulges  in  the  proper  emotions  dur 
ing  the  pauses.  These  functions  are  quite  lim 
ited,  and  were  completely  understood  in  Greek 
times;  so  much  so,  that  in  the  typical  stock  trag 
edy  of  the  ^schylean  school  certain  saws,  max 
ims,  and  reflections  appear  over  and  over  again. 
One  of  them,  of  course,  was,  'See  how  the  will  of 
the  gods  works  out  in  unexpected  ways/  An- 

206 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

other,  *  Let  us  be  pious,  and  reverence  something 
that  is  perhaps  behind  the  gods  themselves.' 
Another,  'This  is  all  very  extraordinary:  let  us 
hope  for  the  best. '  Another,  '  Our  feelings  about 
right  and  wrong  must  somehow  be  divine;  tradi 
tional  morality,  traditional  piety,  are  somehow 
right.' 

Precisely  the  same  reflections  are  often  put  in 
the  mouths  of  the  subordinate  characters,  and  for 
precisely  the  same  purpose.  'Oh,  may  the  quiet 
life  be  mine !  Give  me  neither  poverty  nor  riches : 
for  the  destinies  of  the  great  are  ever  uncertain. ' 
'Temptation  leads  to  insolence,  and  insolence  to 
destruction';  and  so  forth.  Such  reflections 
serve  the  same  purpose,  by  whomever  they  are 
uttered.  They  underscore  the  moral  of  the  story 
and  assure  the  spectator  that  he  has  not  missed 
the  point. 

As  religious  tragedy  broadened  into  political 
and  romantic  tragedy,  the  Chorus  gained  a  cer 
tain  freedom  in  what  might  be  called  its  inter- 
jectional  duty,  —  its  duty,  that  is  to  say,  of  help 
ing  the  plot  along  by  proper  questions,  and  so 
forth.  It  gained  also  a  Protean  freedom  in  its 
emotional  interpretations  during  pauses.  The 
playwrights  apparently  dicovered  that  by  the 
use  of  music  and  dancing,  the  most  subtle  and 
delicate,  nay,  the  most  whimsical  varieties  of 
lyrical  mood  could  be  conveyed  to  great  audi 
ences.  In  spite  of  this  license,  however,  the  old 
duties  of  the  Chorus  as  guardians  of  conservative 

207 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

morality  remained  unchanged;  and  the  stock 
phrases  of  exhortation  and  warning  remained  de 
rigueur  in  the  expectation  of  the  audience.  Their 
meaning  had  become  so  well  known  that,  by  the 
time  of  yEschylus,  they  were  expressed  in  alge 
braic  terms. 

No  man  could  to-day  unravel  a  Chorus  of 
^Lschylus  if  only  one  such  Chorus  existed.  The 
truncated  phrases  and  elliptical  thoughts  are 
clear,  to  us,  because  we  have  learned  their  mean 
ing  through  reiteration,  and  because  they  always 
mean  the  same  thing.  The  poet  has  a  license  to 
provide  the  Chorus  with  dark  sayings,  —  dark  in 
form,  but  simple  in  import.  It  was,  indeed,  his 
duty  to  give  these  phrases  an  oracular  character. 
In  the  course  of  time  such  phrases  became  the 
terror  of  the  copyists.  Obscure  passages  became 
corrupt  in  process  of  transcription;  and  thus  we 
have  inherited  a  whole  class  of  choral  wisdom 
which  we  understand  well  enough  (just  as  the  top 
gallery  understood  it  well  enough)  to  help  us  in 
our  enjoyment  of  the  play.  The  obscurity,  and 
perhaps  even  some  part  of  what  we  call  'corrup 
tion,  '  are  here  a  part  of  the  stage  convention. 

Now  with  regard  to  the  Bacchantes  —  the 
scheme  of  having  Maenads  for  a  Chorus  gave 
splendid  promise  of  scenic  effect;  and  the  fact 
that,  as  a  logical  consequence,  these  ladies  would 
have  to  give  utterance  to  the  usual  maxims  of 
piety,  mixed  in  with  the  rhapsodies  of  their  pro 
fessional  madness,  did  not  daunt  Euripides.  He 

208 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

simply  makes  the  Chorus  do  the  usual  chorus 
work,  without  burdening  his  mind  about  charac 
ter-drawing.  Thus  the  Msenads,  at  moments 
when  they  are  not  pretending  to  be  Msenads,  and 
are  not  singing,  'Away  to  the  mountains,  O  the 
foot  of  the  stag,  '  and  so  on,  are  obliged  to  turn  the 
other  cheek,  and  pretend  to  be  interested  by 
standers —  old  gaffers,  wagging  their  beards, 
and  quoting  the  book  of  Proverbs.  The  transi 
tion  from  one  mood  to  the  other  is  done  in  a  stroke 
of  lightning,  and  seems  to  be  independent  of  the 
music.  That  is,  it  seems  to  make  no  difference, 
so  long  as  the  musical  schemes  are  filled  out, 
whether  the  ladies  are  singing,  'On  with  the 
dance,  let  joy  be  unconfined!'  or,  'True  wisdom 
differs  from  sophistry,  and  consists  in  avoiding 
subjects  that  are  beyond  mortal  comprehension. ' 
All  such  discrepancies  would,  no  doubt,  have 
been  explained  if  we  possessed  the  music;  but 
the  music  is  lost.  It  seems,  at  any  rate,  certain 
that  the  grand  public  was  not  expected  to  under 
stand  the  word-for-word  meaning  of  choruses; 
hence  their  license  to  be  obscure.  We  get  the 
same  impression  from  the  jibes  of  Aristophanes, 
whose  ridicule  of  the  pompous  obscurity  of 
^Eschylus  makes  us  suspect  that  the  audiences 
could  not  follow  the  grammar  in  the  lofty  parts 
of  the  tragedy.  They  accepted  the  drum-roll  of 
horror,  and  understood  the  larger  grammar  of 
tragedy,  much  as  we  are  now  forced  to  do  in  read 
ing  the  plays. 

209 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

It  would  seem  that  by  following  the  technique 
of  tragedy,  and  by  giving  no  thought  to  small  ab 
surdities,  Euripides  got  a  double  effect  out  of  his 
Maenads  and  no  one  observed  that  anything  was 
wrong.  In  one  place  he  resorts  to  a  dramatic 
device,  which  was  perhaps  well  known  in  his  day, 
namely,  the  *  conversion'  of  a  bystander.  After 
the  First  Messenger  has  given  the  great  descrip 
tion  of  Dionysus's  doings  in  the  mountains,  the 
Chorus,  or  one  of  them,  with  overpowering  yet 
controlled  emotion,  steps  forward  and  says,  'I 
tremble  to  speak  free  words  in  the  presence  of  my 
King;  yet  nevertheless  be  it  said:  Dionysus  is  no 
less  a  god  than  the  greatest  of  them  !  '  This  refer 
ence  to  the  duty  of  a  subject  is  probably  copied 
from  a  case  where  the  Chorus  was  made  up  of 
local  bystanders.  In  the  mouth  of  a  Maenad  the 
proclamation  is  logically  ridiculous  ;  yet  so  strange 
are  the  laws  of  what  'goes'  on  the  stage  that  it 
may  have  been  effective  even  here. 

Some  of  the  choruses  in  the  Bacchantes  are 
miracles  of  poetic  beauty,  of  savage  passion,  of 
liquid  power.  It  is  hard  to  say  exactly  what  they 
are,  but  they  are  wonderful.  And  behind  all, 
there  gleams  from  the  whole  play  a  sophistication 
as  deep  as  the 


VI 

There  is  one  thing  that  we  should  never  do  in 
dealing  with  anything  Greek.  We  should  not 
take  a  scrap  of  the  Greek  mind  and  keep  on  ex- 


210 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

amining  it  until  we  find  a  familiar  thought  in  it. 
No  bit  of  Greek  art  is  to  be  viewed  as  a  thing  in 
itself.  It  is  always  a  fragment,  and  gets  its  value 
from  the  whole.  Every  bit  of  carved  stone 
picked  up  in  Athens  is  a  piece  of  architecture ;  so  is 
every  speech  in  a  play,  every  phrase  in  a  dialogue. 
You  must  go  back  and  bring  in  the  whole  Theatre 
or  the  whole  Academy,  and  put  back  the  frag 
ment  in  its  place  by  means  of  ladders,  before  you 
can  guess  at  its  meaning.  The  inordinate  signifi 
cance  that  seems  to  gleam  from  every  broken  toy 
of  Greece,  results  from  this  very  quality  —  that 
the  object  is  a  part  of  something  else.  Just  be 
cause  the  thing  has  no  meaning  by  itself,  it  im 
plies  so  much.  Somehow  it  drags  the  whole  life  of 
the  Greek  nation  before  you.  The  favorite  Greek 
maxim,  'Avoid  excess,*  does  the  same.  It  keeps 
telling  you  to  remember  yesterday  and  to-morrow; 
to  remember  the  palcestra  and  the  market-place; 
above  all  to  remember  that  the  very  opposite  of 
what  you  say  is  also  true.  Wherever  you  are, 
and  whatever  doing,  you  must  remember  the 
rest  of  the  Greek  world. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  the  Greeks  could  not  adopt 
the  standards  and  contrivances  of  other  nations, 
while  their  own  standards  and  contrivances  re 
sulted  from  such  refined  and  perpetual  balancing 
and  shaving  of  values.  This  refinement  has  be 
come  part  of  their  daily  life ;  and  whether  one  ex 
amines  a  drinking  cup  or  a  dialogue  or  a  lyric,  and 
whether  the  thing  be  from  the  age  of  Homer  or 

211 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

from  the  age  of  Alexander,  the  fragment  always 
gives  us  a  glimpse  into  the  same  Greek  world. 
The  foundation  of  this  world  seems  to  be  the 
Myth;  and  as  the  world  grew  it  developed  in 
terms  of  Myth.  The  Greek  mind  had  only  one 
background.  Athletics  and  Statuary,  Epic  and 
Drama,  Religion  and  Art,  Skepticism  and  Sci 
ence  expressed  themselves  through  the  same 
myths.  In  this  lies  the  fascination  of  Greece  for 
us.  What  a  complete  cosmos  it  is !  And  how  dif 
ferent  from  any  other  civilization!  Modern  life, 
like  modern  language,  is  a  monstrous  amalgam, 
a  conglomeration  and  mess  of  idioms  from  every 
age  and  every  clime.  The  classic  Greek  hangs  to 
gether  like  a  wreath.  It  has  been  developed  rap 
idly,  during  a  few  hundred  years,  and  has  an  inner 
harmony  like  the  temple.  Language  and  temple 
—  each  was  an  apparition ;  each  is,  in  its  own  way, 
perfect. 

Consider  wherein  Rome  differed  from  Greece. 
The  life  of  the  Romans  was  a  patchwork,  like  our 
own.  Their  religion  was  formal,  their  art  im 
ported,  their  literature  imitative,  their  aims  were 
practical,  their  interests  unimaginative.  All  so 
cial  needs  were  controlled  by  political  considera 
tions.  This  sounds  almost  like  a  description  of 
modern  life;  and  it  explains  why  the  Romans  are 
so  close  to  us.  Cicero,  Horace,  Caesar,  Antony, 
are  moderns.  But  Alcibiades,  Socrates,  Pericles, 
and  the  rest  take  their  stand  in  Greek  fable.  Like 
Pisistratus,  Solon,  and  Lycurgus,  they  melt  into 

212 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

legend  and  belong  to  the  realms  of  the  imagina 
tion. 

No  other  people  ever  bore  the  same  relation  to 
their  arts  that  the  Greeks  bore;  and  in  this  lies 
their  charm.  When  the  Alexandrine  critics  began 
to  classify  poetry  and  to  discuss  perfection,  they 
never  even  mentioned  the  Roman  poetry,  al 
though  all  of  the  greatest  of  it  was  in  existence. 
Why  is  this?  It  is  because  no  Roman  poem  is  a 
poem  at  all  from  the  Greek  point  of  view.  It  is 
too  individual,  too  clever,  and,  generally,  too 
political.  Besides,  it  is  not  in  Greek.  The  near 
est  modern  equivalent  to  the  development  of  the 
whole  Greek  world  of  art  is  to  be  found  in  Ger 
man  contrapuntal  music.  No  one  except  a  Ger 
man  has  ever  written  a  true  sonata  or  a  sym 
phony,  in  the  true  polyphonic  German  style. 
There  are  tours  de  force  done  by  other  nationali 
ties;  but  the  natural  idiom  of  this  music  is  Teu 
tonic. 

I  am  not  condemning  the  Latins,  or  the  mod 
erns.  Indeed,  there  is  in  Horace  something 
nobler  and  more  humane  than  in  all  Olympus. 
The  Greeks,  moreover,  seem  in  their  civic  incom 
petence  like  children,  when  contrasted  with  the 
Romans  or  with  the  moderns.  But  in  power  of 
utterance,  within  their  own  crafts,  the  Greeks  are 
unapproachable.  Let  us  now  speak  of  matters 
of  which  we  know  very  little. 

The  statues  on  the  Parthenon  stand  in  a  region 
where  direct  criticism  cannot  reach  them,  but 

213 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

which  trigonometry  may,  to  some  extent,  deter 
mine.  Their  beauty  probably  results  from  an 
artistic  knowledge  so  refined,  a  sophistication  so 
exact,  that,  as  we  gaze,  we  lose  the  process  and 
see  only  results.  A  Greek  architect  could  have 
told  you  just  what  lines  of  analysis  must  be  fol 
lowed  in  order  to  get  these  effects  in  grouping 
and  in  relief.  It  is  all,  no  doubt,  built  up  out  of 
tonic  and  dominant  —  but  the  manual  of  counter 
point  has  been  lost.  As  the  tragic  poet  fills  the 
stage  with  the  legend,  so  the  sculptor  fills  the 
metope  with  the  legend.  Both  are  closely  fol 
lowing  artistic  usage:  each  is  merely  telling  the 
old  story  with  new  refinement.  And  whether  we 
gaze  at  the  actors  on  the  stage  or  at  the  figures  in 
the  metope,  whether  we  study  a  lyric  or  listen  to 
a  dialogue,  we  are  in  communion  with  the  same 
genius,  the  same  legend.  The  thing  which  moves 
and  delights  us  is  a  unity. 

This  Genius  is  not  hard  to  understand.  Any 
one  can  understand  it.  That  is  the  proof  of  its 
greatness.  As  Boccaccio  said  of  Dante,  not  learn 
ing  but  good  wits  are  needed  to  appreciate  him. 
One  cannot  safely  look  toward  the  mind  of  the 
modern  scholar  for  an  understanding  of  the  Greek 
mind,  because  the  modern  scholar  is  a  specialist 
—  a  thing  the  Greek  abhors.  If  a  scholar  to-day 
knows  the  acoustics  of  the  Greek  stage,  that  is 
thought  to  be  a  large  enough  province  for  him. 
He  is  not  allowed  to  be  an  authority  on  the  scen 
ery.  In  the  modern  scholar's  mind  everything  is 

214 


THE  GREEK  GENIUS 

in  cubby-holes;  and  everybody  to-day  wants  to 
become  an  authority.  Every  one,  moreover,  is 
very  serious  to-day;  and  it  does  not  do  to  be  too 
serious  about  Greek  things,  because  the  very 
genius  of  Greece  has  in  it  a  touch  of  irony,  which 
combines  with  our  seriousness  to  make  a  heavy, 
indigestible  paste.  The  Greek  will  always  laugh 
at  you  if  he  can,  and  the  only  hope  is  to  keep  him 
at  arm's  length,  and  deal  with  him  in  the  spirit 
of  social  life,  of  the  world,  of  the  beau  monde,  and 
of  large  conversation.  His  chief  merit  is  to  stimu 
late  this  spirit.  The  less  we  dogmatize  about  his 
works  and  ways,  the  freer  will  the  world  be  of 
secondary,  second-rate  commentaries.  The  more 
we  study  his  works  and  ways,  the  fuller  will  the 
world  become  of  intellectual  force. 

The  Greek  classics  are  a  great  help  in  tearing 
open  those  strong  envelopes  in  which  the  culti 
vation  of  the  world  is  constantly  getting  glued  up. 
They  helped  Europe  to  cut  free  from  theocratic 
tyranny  in  the  late  Middle  Ages.  They  held  the 
Western  world  together  after  the  fall  of  the  Pa 
pacy.  They  gave  us  modern  literature :  indeed,  if 
one  considers  all  that  comes  from  Greece,  one  can 
hardly  imagine  what  the  world  would  have  been 
like  without  her.  The  lamps  of  Greek  thought 
are  still  burning  in  marble  and  in  letters.  The 
complete  little  microcosm  of  that  Greek  society 
hangs  forever  in  the  great  macrocosm  of  the  mov 
ing  world,  and  sheds  rays  which  dissolve  preju 
dice,  making  men  thoughtful,  rational,  and  gay. 

2I.S 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

The  greatest  intellects  are  ever  the  most  power 
fully  affected  by  it ;  but  no  one  escapes.  Nor  can 
the  world  ever  lose  this  benign  influence,  which 
must,  so  far  as  philosophy  can  imagine,  qualify 
human  life  forever. 


In  Praise  of  Old  Ladies 

By  Lucy  Martin  Donnelly 

IT  is  everywhere  the  custom,  in  life,  in  literature, 
to  celebrate  the  young  girl;  to  praise  her  pink 
cheeks,  her  shining  hair,  her  innocence,  her  gaye- 
ties  —  her  muslins,  even,  and  blue  ribbons.  She 
has  become  in  these  latter  days  a  proverb,  a  type 
—lajeunefille.  Yet,  to  the  discreet  observer  how 
gaudy  is  her  charm,  how  showy  and  unsubstan 
tial,  and  of  the  day  only,  when  matched  with 
graces  like  those  of  the  truly  incomparable  old 
lady !  It  is  an  antique  convention  that  hurries  off 
old  age  with  decrepitude  and  care  and  quavering 
palsy.  And  it  may  be  that  the  old  gentleman  is 
unamiable;  that,  his  days  of  strenuousness  fairly 
over,  he  becomes  crabbed,  a  lover  of  snuff,  and 
unpoetical.  But  the  old  lady  is  a  creature  of 
another  quality.  The  refinements  of  age  only  en 
hance  the  femininity  of  her  charm ;  to  her,  whim 
sicalities,  delicate  occupations,  the  fine  lines  that 
etch  themselves  expressively  across  her  brow  and 
about  her  mouth,  are  all  vastly  becoming.  With 
what  ineffable  grace,  moreover,  she  pronounces 
certain  words  in  the  elegant  fashion  of  an  age  ago ! 

217 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

How  softly  the  old  Indian  shawls  she  wears  fall 
about  her  shoulders!  What  strange,  unlikely 
stories  she  tells  of  the  beginning  of  the  century ! 

I  am  indeed  no  novice  to  her  charms.  I  have 
been  victim  to  the  enchantments  of  a  long  line  of 
old  ladies  from  my  earliest  years  upward.  When 
my  frocks  were  still  short  and  I  still  suffered  un 
der  the  ignominy  of  pinafores,  I  remember  very 
well  following  a  friend  of  my  grandmother's  about, 
and  fetching  big  books  for  her.  She  was  an  ex 
ceedingly  learned  old  lady,  I  take  it;  indeed,  my 
grandmother  always  spoke  of  her  as  strong- 
minded,  wherefore  I  am  sometimes  led  to  doubt 
whether  she  would  so  unreservedly  have  pleased 
my  maturer  taste.  But  in  those  early  days  my 
devotion  impelled  me  even  to  the  point  of  learn 
ing  the  alphabets  of  the  curious  languages  she 
read.  What  constituted  her  peculiar,  her  roman 
tic  charm,  however,  was  the  fact  that  she  had 
traveled  in  many  far-away  countries.  I  always 
understood  it  was  their  strange  suns  that  had 
turned  her  skin  the  yellow  color  of  old  parchment, 
and  stopped  the  whitening  of  her  hair  at  a  grizzly 
gray.  This  particular  ugly  gray  I  admired  along 
with  the  rest:  it  suggested  worldly  sophistication 
and  a  cosmopolitan  experience,  as  did  no  less  her 
deep  voice  and  blue-veined  hands,  and  her  habit 
of  taking  a  vigorous  walk  in  the  morning,  before 
breakfast.  Her  daughter,  she  told  me,  was  named 
Aurore.  How  I  wished  that  I  myself  had  been 
favored  with  such  a  name ! 

218 


IN  PRAISE  OF  OLD  LADIES 

My  grandmother  was  very  different  —  much 
prettier  and  gentler,  no  doubt ;  but  her  daughters 
bore  such  stiff,  old-fashioned  names  as  Anne  and 
Emeline,  and  she  herself  had  seldom  left  New 
England,  and  took  only  a  short  walk  in  the  sun  at 
noonday,  under  a  tiny  black  silk  parasol.  At 
other  times  she  sat  beside  her  work-table,  which 
had  legs  of  twisted  mahogany,  and  a  crimson  silk 
bag  hanging  down  from  the  middle  in  a  way  I 
never  understood.  Out  of  this  she  occasionally 
brought  scraps  of  faded  old  brocades,  —  pink 
and  green  they  would  be,  with  a  rare  yellow,  or  a 
blue  still  a  little  gay;  and  now  and  then,  when  the 
winter  evenings  until  my  bedtime  were  long,  she 
even  found  bright-colored  beads  in  a  small  drawer 
at  the  side.  Although  she  had  been  '  a  proficient ' 
in  music  as  a  girl,  I  think  she  knew  no  language 
save  English.  Emerson  she  read  chiefly;  the 
prayers  of  Theodore  Parker;  black  volumes  of 
sermons  by  William  Ellery  Channing;  and  some 
times,  to  me,  in  a  very  soft  voice,  Whittier's 
poems.  In  the  late  afternoons  she  was  accus 
tomed  to  play  at  solitaire,  letting  me  sit  at  a  cor 
ner  of  the  table  to  look  on.  Not  infrequently, 
when  excited  by  the  odds  against  which  we  were 
fighting,  I  forgot  to  hold  up  my  head,  and  my 
long  brown  curls,  falling  down  among  the  cards, 
threw  them  into  disarray,  and  obliged  me  to  sit 
at  a  penitential  distance.  My  grandmother  did 
not  choose  to  be  interrupted.  But  all  the  games 
in  turn  she  invariably  won  by  a  deft  rearrange- 

219 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ment  of  the  cards  when  she  saw  them  going  wrong. 
'With  one's  self,  you  know,  my  dear/  she  would 
say,  judiciously  distributing  diamonds  among 
the  spades,  -  'with  one's  self  it  is  quite  under 
stood/ 

Since  the  days  of  my  grandmother  and  her 
friends  I  have  known  a  hundred  other  old  ladies, 
if  none  more  charming.  There  are,  I  dare  say, 
persons  who,  in  going  about  the  world,  meet  peo 
ple  of  other  sorts:  actors,  perhaps,  or  ladies  of 
fashion,  or  diplomatists,  —  first  of  all,  I  fancy,  to 
be  desired,  —  or  spiritualists,  or  musicians.  Per 
sonally,  I  never  fall  in  with  any  one  except  old 
ladies.  In  a  railway  train,  for  example,  I  am  sure 
to  find  myself  opposite  or  beside  one,  and  of  late 
years  they  have  generally  had  birds  with  them. 

The  first  I  remember  —  with  a  bird,  that  is  - 
was  in  a  German  railway  carriage  going  from 
Berlin  to  Hanover.  At  least,  my  destination  was 
Hanover;  the  old  lady  herself  was  on  her  way 
home  to  Diisseldorf.  She  had  been  visiting  her 
nephews  and  nieces  in  Berlin;  she  had  a  great 
many  of  them,  she  told  me.  From  her  fingers, 
covered  with  old  pearl  and  diamond  rings,  I  gath 
ered  that  she  was  very  rich;  and  from  the  bou 
quets  of  many  colors,  ranged  in  the  luggage-rack 
above  her  head,  that  the  nephews  and  nieces  were 
trying  to  persuade  her  to  leave  them  her  fortune. 
She  wore,  nevertheless,  an  air  of  extreme  detach 
ment,  holding  her  long  netted  silk  purse - 
through  whose  meshes  the  Prussian  gold  gleamed 

220 


IN  PRAISE  OF  OLD  LADIES 

-  tightly  clasped  between  two  fat  fingers.  Al 
together  she  was  a  very  portly  and  regal-looking 
person,  and  gave  you  the  impression  of  being 
dressed  in  black  velvet,  though  in  point  of  fact  I 
do  not  think  that  she  was.  But  her  mantle  was 
fringed  heavily  several  times  about,  and  her  hat 
—  for  she  wore  a  hat  with  a  brim  that  dropped 
slightly,  discreetly,  all  around  —  was  also  bor 
dered  by  a  black  fringe  that  just  cleared  her  faded 
eyebrows  and  her  black  beady  eyes.  She  had  a 
gouty  foot,  too,  —  she  was  quite  complete,  - 
that  rested  on  a  little  folding  stool  she  had  brought 
with  her;  and  she  rang  imperiously  for  the  guard. 
When  he  came  she  ordered  coffee,  bullying  the 
cream-faced  Teuton  into  bringing  a  double  por 
tion  of  sugar  to  feed  her  bird,  a  little  green  crea 
ture,  disposed  among  the  flowers  above  her  head. 
It  was  with  a  good  deal  of  difficulty  that  she 
struggled  up  to  reach  him,  but  to  have  him 
handed  down  would,  she  said,  excite  him  unnec 
essarily.  'Mein  Mannchen,  mein  Mannchen,' 
she  murmured  in  a  deep,  tender  tone,  as  she  fed 
him  each  successive  crumb.  After  feasting  the 
bird  she  turned  her  attention  to  me,  and  asking 
to  see  the  book  that  I  was  absorbed  in,  she  kept  it 
until  we  arrived  at  Hanover.  I  had  evidently 
read  too  much  in  trains,  she  remarked,  alluding 
to  my  eye-glasses.  Americans,  she  knew,  were  very 
foolish.  Then  she  asked  me  the  price  of  every 
thing  in  the  States,  and  of  my  traveling  bag  in 
particular,  and  quarreled  with  me  as  to  the  num- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

her  of  marks  in  a  dollar.  'You  '11  find  that  I  am 
right, '  she  assured  me,  as  I  was  squeezing  myself 
and  the  brown  leather  bag  she  admired  out  of  the 
narrow  door  of  the  German  coupe.  'You'll  find 
there  are  six  marks  in  every  dollar.  Auf  wieder- 
sehen,  Fraulein.' 

The  last  of  my  old  ladies  with  birds  I  met  only 
a  month  or  two  ago,  on  the  way  from  London 
down  to  Southsea,  —  the  one  place  in  all  the 
world,  I  suppose,  whither  a  thin  spinster,  accom 
panied  by  a  ragged-tailed  bird  named  Tip,  should 
be  traveling.  She  was,  of  course,  very  different 
from  the  German  dowager;  not  so  far  on  in  years, 
and,  as  I  indicated,  exaggeratedly  thin;  shy,  fur 
thermore,  and  dressed  in  a  worn  black-silk  gown, 
with  a  lace  collar  at  her  throat  drawn  together 
by  a  hair  brooch.  And  she  spoke  only  from  time 
to  time,  to  inquire  if  we  must  change  carriages  at 
Woking ;  meanwhile  looking  a  little  greedily  from 
Tip  to  the  seedcakes  in  the  hands  of  three  English 
schoolgirls,  who,  with  shortish  frocks  and  longish 
hair  hanging  over  their  shoulders,  sat  in  a  row  on 
my  side  of  the  carriage,  and  scattered  crumbs 
enough  to  have  fattened  a  family  of  partridges. 

Old  ladies  at  sea,  though  there  without  the  em 
bellishments  of  flowers  and  birds,  I  have  found  no 
less  attractive  than  on  land.  I  fell  in  with  a  party 
of  them  in  the  early  summer,  on  their  way  to 
Carlsbad  to  drink  the  waters;  with  the  exception, 
that  is,  of  two  or  three  whose  destination  was 
Kissingen,  and  who  disbelieved  altogether,  I 

222 


IN  PRAISE  OF  OLD  LADIES 

learned  when  we  were  a  few  days  out  from  New 
York,  in  the  rheumatism  of  the  Carlsbad-bound 
ladies.  Carlsbad,  they  assured  me, — punctuating 
their  remarks  with  sniffs  of  their  smelling-bottles 
as  I  tucked  cushions  behind  their  poor  backs,  - 
Carlsbad  was  all  fine  clothes  and  frivolity  and 
band  music  (than  which  surely  nothing  has  a 
more  wicked  sound),  and  was  by  no  means  the 
place  a  person  really  ill  would  dream  of  retiring 
to  for  her  health's  sake. 

But  it  matters  very  little  whether  I  travel  in 
trains  or  in  ships,  or  whether  I  rest  quietly  at 
home,  my  companions  are  rarely  of  my  own  age. 
If  I  am  asked  out  to  luncheon  to  meet  the  wife  of 
a  melancholy  doubtful  poet  who  died  young,  and 
on  my  way  to  the  house  in  question  dwell,  not 
unnaturally,  on  her  youthful  tragic  grief,  on  my 
arrival  I  find  myself  confronted  by  a  fat,  kindly 
old  lady,  crowned  with  a  large  black-beaded  bon 
net  that  shows  a  bunch  of  purple  flowers  above 
either  ear.  If  I  go  to  visit  some  beautiful  house 
secluded  in  the  country,  it  is  an  old  lady  who 
stands  on  the  threshold.  I  remember  such  a  man 
sion,  built  in  Tudor  times,  and  topped  with  chim 
neys  calculated  to  make  you  sigh  your  soul  away 
in  longing ;  it  had  once  been  the  dower  house  of  an 
English  queen,  and  in  front  of  it  two  peacocks 
paraded  proudly  all  day  long.  Others,  I  knew, 
went  to  admire  it,  and  were  entertained  by  the 
granddaughter,  or  at  least  by  the  middle-aged 
daughter,  of  its  mistress.  Not  so  on  the  sunny 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

morning  of  my  visit.  Lady  W  -  -  herself  was 
working  among  the  flowers  in  her  garden,  and 
herself  showed  me  back  to  the  cascade  and  the 
tulip  tree,  stepping  over  the  lawn  with  the  spirit 
of  a  girl,  and  apologizing  with  a  girl's  vanity,  too, 
for  her  garden  hat  and  gloves. 

She  was  the  very  flower  and  mirror  of  all  the 
old  ladies  I  have  ever  known;  conscious,  if  you 
will,  of  her  charm,  and  all  the  more  charming  for 
that.  She  led  me  into  the  drawing  room  —  she 
knew  she  held  my  heart  in  her  hand  —  to  see  her 
portrait,  which,  though  painted  by  a  celebrated 
artist,  made  her  look  very  like  any  other  old  lady 
in  velvet  and  a  bonnet  and  furs.  Her  great  gay- 
ety,  her  beautiful  eyes,  the  sweet  curving  lines 
about  her  mouth,  were  all  forgotten.  '  I  don't 
know, '  she  said  to  me  a  little  stiffly,  as  she  paused 
before  it,  and  for  a  moment  glanced  across  to  her 
maternal  grandmother  done  by  Reynolds,  with 
pink  cheeks,  and  with  a  pink  rose  in  her  hand 
instead  of  a  muff,  '  I  don't  know,  my  dear,  whe 
ther  it  is  like  or  not,  but  certainly  it  is  a  very  odd 
picture. ' 

More  delightful  though  each  one  be  than  the 
last,  it  is  but  reasonable  that  the  wealth  of  my 
experience  among  old  ladies  should  have  led  me 
to  certain  discriminations.  Old  ladies,  I  am 
prepared  to  say,  divide  themselves  into  two 
classes :  the  thin,  namely,  and  the  fat.  Nor  is  this 
discrimination  so  artificial  as  it  may  appear. 
Another  equally  expressive,  equally  conclusive, 

224 


IN  PRAISE  OF  OLD  LADIES 

could  not  be  made.  And  of  the  two  —  but  this  is 
a  matter  of  prejudice  —  I  prefer  the  thin,  as  hav 
ing  commonly  more  wit,  more  liveliness,  brighter 
eyes,  and  a  taste  for  anecdote  generally  wanting, 
I  think  it  only  right  to  say,  in  the  fatter,  kindlier 
class.  My  point  of  view  is  possibly  ultra-modern, 
but  what  will  you?  La  grande  dame,  so  called, 
vanished  with  the  days  and  ideals  of  Louis  XIV. 
At  the  end  of  two  centuries  or  so  she  is  rarely  to 
be  met  with.  I  have  known  her  only  once  in  all 
her  traditional  fairness,  but  then  she  was  of  the 
essence  of  perfection.  She  gave  one  the  impres 
sion  of  having  never  for  a  moment  been  out  of 
the  great  world;  of  having  lived,  though  in  New 
York,  perpetually  with  princes  —  '  Us  princes  du 
sang,  Us  princes  etr  angers,  Us  grands-seigneurs  faqon 
de  princes. '  But  what  is  my  ungraceful  pen  that 
it  should  hazard  a  description  of  her,  or  attempt 
the  splendor  of  her  white  hair  and  her  white 
hands !  Her  graciousness,  her  elegance,  her  world- 
liness,  are  not  to  be  compassed  by  a  sentence. 

Among  modern  old  ladies,  of  whom  I  speak 
somewhat  less  diffidently,  I  affect  the  more  frivo 
lous  sort.  My  own  feeling  is,  very  strictly,  that 
in  old  age  the  world  of  affairs  should  be  left  be 
hind,  and  one's  hours  passed  pleasantly  among 
pleasant  things.  Age  should  be  impulsive,  light- 
hearted  —  brilliant,  if  you  will ;  it  should  fill  its 
days  with  flowers  and  music  and  embroidery;  it 
should  drive  in  low  carriages  behind  plump  ponies; 
it  should  write  a  pretty,  pointed,  epistolary  hand, 

225 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

and  read  nothing  heavier  than  memoirs.  Intel 
lectuality  may  be  all  very  well  in  youth,  but  in  an 
old  lady  anything  beyond  a  delicate  pedantry  is 
unlovely.  I  like  old  ladies  with  decided  opinions, 
with  a  gift  for  repartee  and  some  skill  in  the  pas 
sions.  Curiosities,  strange  modesties,  —  I  knew 
of  an  old  lady  who  brought  her  grandsons  up 
never  to  look  into  a  butcher's  shop,  deeming  it 
indecorous,  even  indecent,  —  fantastic  economies, 
eccentricities  of  various  sorts,  are  delightful.  And 
of  all  these  things  the  insipidity  and  jejuneness  of 
youth  perforce  know  nothing.  The  very  pattern 
of  young  girls  is  bound  by  a  strait-lacing  conven 
tionality.  Formalities,  anxieties,  uncertainties, 
sit  upon  her  sleeve.  She  has  no  alternative,  in 
nocent  creature,  save  to  order  her  days  and  lay 
her  plans  in  behalf  of  a  charming  old  ladyhood. 


A  Memory  of  Old  Gentlemen 

By  Sharlot  M.  Hall 

I  HAVE  always  shared  the  preference  of  the  poet 
Swinburne  for  very  old  people  and  very  little  chil 
dren,  and,  as  it  has  happened,  nearly  all  of  my  old 
people  have  been  of  that  sex  to  which  Shakespeare 
refers  as  coming  eventually  to  the  '  lean  and  slip 
pered  pantaloon.' 

It  began  when  I  was  a  particularly  roly-poly 
little  girl  of  four,  with  brown  braids  carried 
through  the  back  of  my  sunbonnet  and  tied  fast 
in  its  strings,  that  the  unwelcome  shadow  of  that 
blue  gingham  might  never  be  absent. 

In  compensation,  I  suppose,  there  was  an  equally 
roly-poly  old  gentleman  who  used  to  toss  me  up 
in  the  long  swing  under  the  big  oak  trees,  singing 
in  rhythm  to  my  swaying  self  the  chorus  of  a  then 
popular  song :  — 

Swinging  in  the  lane;  swinging  in  the  lane; 
Sweetest  girl  I  ever  met  was  swinging  in  the  lane. 

The  great,  bending  branches  spread  a  canopy 
befitting  a  Druid  temple,  and  the  new  little  leaves, 
like  crumpled  bronze  velvet,  brushed  my  face  as 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

I  held  fast  to  the  ropes,  all  a-tremble  with  the 
spirit  of  adventure  and  a  little  fear  that  the  earth 
was  so  very  far  away,  and  was  tossed  up  till  I 
could  peep  into  the  nest  out  of  which  my  pet  blue 
jay  had  tumbled  a  week  before.  One  of  his  broth 
ers  sat,  a  disconsolate  fluff  of  faded  blue  feathers, 
on  the  edge  of  the  nest,  and  the  parent  birds 
squalled  noisy  protest  at  the  sturdy,  red-stock 
inged  legs  invading  their  domestic  privacy. 

The  oaks  and  the  swing  and  the  old  gentleman 
were  the  first  milestones  on  my  way  to  Grown-Up 
Land.  When  my  round  fat  arm  had  no  longer  to 
reach  straight  up  to  clasp  my  pudgy  fingers  around 
the  thumb  of  my  friend ;  when  after  many  trials 
I  caught  the  ropes  and  lifted  myself  without  help 
to  the  wide  board  swing-seat;  then  I  was  truly 
1  bigz '  and  trotted  off  to  demanH  that  a  new  mark 
should  take  the  place  of  the  one  that  had  lately 
shown  my  height  on  the  smooth  gray  trunk  of  my 
favorite  tree.  Smooth,  for  those  wonderful  oaks, 
centuries  old,  and  each  many  feet  in  girth,  had 
been  repeatedly  stripped  of  their  bark  as  high  as 
a  man  could  reach ;  and  now,  as  if  tired  of  renew 
ing  the  ever  stolen  coat,  contented  themselves 
with  a  thin,  scarlike  covering.  Since  their  sap 
ling  days,  perhaps,  slender,  conical  tepees  of  buf 
falo  skins  had  nestled  in  their  shade^and  number 
less  brown  babies  had  swung  l  Rock-a-bye  baby  in 
a  tree-top  *  from  their  limbs. 

There  was  a  broad  hearth  of  stones  between 
the  spreading  roots  of  one  where  buffalo  steaks 

228 


A  MEMORY  OF  OLD  GENTLEMEN 

had  been  broiled,  and  where  other  children  had 
roasted  the  plump  ripe  acorns  as  I  was  fond  of 
doing. 

The  buffalo  robes  for  the  tepees  and  deerskins 
for  the  gayly  wrought  moccasins  had  been  tanned 
with  the  bark  stripped  from  those  very  trees  under 
which  I  played  and  swung.  In  the  little  grove  be 
hind  my  beloved  trees,  and  bordered  by  the  tiny 
creek  where  I  waded  and  fished  with  a  bent  pin 
for  small  flat  sunfish  as  bright  as  living  sunbeams, 
were  bare  poles  still  standing  in  a  circle,  lashed  to 
gether  at  their  tops  with  strips  of  bark  or  thongs 
of  raw-hide. 

There  were  wild  cherries  in  the  grove,  good  in 
blossom  and  better  in  fruit,  puckery-sweet  wild 
plums,  and  a  great  black- walnut  tree  dear  to  my 
self  and  the  squirrels;  and  here  the  spirit  of  ad 
venture  thrilled  me  again,  for  my  fancy  saw 
dusky  faces  behind  every  bush,  and  the  feathery 
cherry  blossoms  were  always  nodding  eagle  feath 
ers  on  the  head  of  the  warrior  just  waiting  to 
seize  me. 

A  good  deal  of  this  was  due  to  my  old  friend 
who  had  just  come  from  the  East,  a  far-away, 
mysterious  Somewhere  to  me,  and  who,  I  am  in 
clined  to  think,  secretly  shared  my  dread  of  these 
brown  people  in  whose  home  we  were  interlopers. 
But  some  of  it  came  from  the  tales  to  which  I  lis 
tened  after  I  was  tucked  away  in  my  trundle-bed 
on  winter  nights,  and  the  men  gathered  around 

229 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

the  fire  to  talk  of  Indian  raids  and  hunting  and 
trapping  adventures. 

Not  a  few  of  my  old  gentlemen  at  this  time 
were  gray-bearded  scouts  and  hunters,  with  great 
caps  of  fur  and  long  rifles  that  seemed  to  tower 
above  my  head  as  far  as  the  oaks.  Children  were 
rare  novelties  to  those  men  of  the  plains,  and  I 
was  passed  from  shoulder  to  shoulder,  delighted 
with  tales  of  bear  and  buffalo,  and  fingering  with 
awed  hands  the  beaded  shot-pouches  and  belts  of 
embroidered  buckskin,  but  feeling  all  the  while 
almost  as  far  above  earth  as  when  I  swung  over 
the  blue  jay's  nest.  Then  we  moved  away,  and 
my  next  old  gentleman  was  the  very  antithesis  of 
the  first.  Small  and  thin  and  morose,  with  a  bit 
terness  that  almost  hid  the  sadness  in  his  face.  A 
misanthrope,  a  reiser,  an  atheist,  said  his  neigh 
bors;  but,  in  truth,  only  a  man  over  whom  hung 
the  shadow  of  a  tragedy  that  had  darkened  his 
life.  Sometimes  for  days  his  mind  'traveled  a 
crooked  road, '  as  he  said,  and  then  he  would  wan 
der  alone  in  the  hills,  or  shut  himself  up  with  his 
books;  and  no  smoke  came  out  of  the  chimney, 
and  no  answer  was  given  to  curious  people  who 
knocked  at  the  door.  Most  children  feared  him, 
but  I  did  not;  that  and  my  love  of  books  made 
the  bond  between  us.  He  lent  me  quaint  old 
histories  and  philosophies,  full  of  big  words  that 
sounded  very  fine  as  he  rolled  them  off  in  a  so 
norous  voice.  I  learned  to  know  Swedenborg 
from  Kant,  and  Kant  from  Comte,  and  was  in  a 

230 


A  MEMORY  OF  OLD  GENTLEMEN 

fair  way  to  become  a  philosopher  myself  when 
again  we  moved  —  so  far  that  we  both  knew  the 
parting  was  final. 

With  fingers  still  pudgy  I  crocheted  him  a  pair 
of  marvelous  green  'wristers'  as  a  farewell  gift, 
and  he  brought  me  a  thick  red  volume,  De  Foe's 
History  of  the  Devilj  with  pictures  that  made  my 
brown  braids  rise  up  visibly  every  time  I  looked 
at  them,  and  a  single  German  silver  teaspoon, 
which  he  said  was  to  form  the  nucleus  of  my  wed 
ding  silver. 

Years  later  some  book  thief  of  abnormal  tastes 
robbed  me  of  the  treasured  De  Foe,  but  the  spoon 
still  reposes  in  solitary  state,  untroubled  by  addi 
tions,  and  most  unlikely  ever  to  serve  the  end  for 
which  my  old  friend  designed  it. 

My  last  word  of  him  was  in  an  ill-scrawled, 
childish  letter  from  a  schoolmate:  'Mr.  Cushion 
is  dead;  the  doctor  gave  him  some  medicine  and 
he  died. '  I  was  old  enough  to  have  a  certain  glad 
ness  mingle  with  my  regret.  The  shadow  was 
lifted ;  there  were  no  more  crooked  roads  to  travel ; 
my  old  friend  was  at  rest. 

It  was  my  next  old  gentleman  who  introduced 
me  to  Shakespeare  and  the  Mean  and  slippered 
pantaloon. '  A  wicked  sense  of  the  appropriate 
ness  of  the  quotation  flashed  into  my  mind  as  he 
read  it;  I  wondered,  in  fact,  if  the  Bard  of  Avon 
had  been  shuffling  around  in  dressing-gown  and 
carpet  slippers  when  it  was  written.  Yet  this  un 
tidy  old  man,  who  loved  Shakespeare,  reveled  in 

231 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

Shelley,  and  wrote  heroic  verse  and  Greek  dramas 
by  the  sackful,  had,  they  told  me,  been  a  brilliant 
soldier,  the  pick  and  pride  of  his  regiment,  the 
model  in  dress  and  deportment  of  all  the  fresh  re 
cruits.  Surely  the  irony  of  fate  is  something  more 
than  rhetoric. 

If  he  wrote  in  lighter  vein,  he  had  lived  in  trag 
edy  ;  between  The  Skylark  and  Under  the  Green 
wood  Tree  we  had  glimpses  of  bloody  battlefield, 
of  disease-reeking,  famine-scourged  Southern  pris 
ons,  of  narrow  escapes,  and  men  hunted  like  wild 
beasts. 

Very  proud  was  my  old  friend  when  my  own 
blundering  thoughts  first  shaped  themselves  in 
verse;  I  doubt  if  Hamlet  on  his  first  appearance 
received  such  an  ovation.  And  then  one  night 
the  sacks  of  manuscript  were  packed,  the  little 
trunk  strapped,  and  the  daylight  train  bore  away, 
we  never  knew  whither,  one  who  left  word  to  no 
one,  but  three  books  —  the  battered  Shakespeare, 
Shelley  minus  his  cover,  and  a  first  edition  of 
Whittier  —  to  a  little  girl. 

No  word  has  come  out  of  the  silence,  but  when 
I  am  making  air  castles  I  like  to  think  that  some 
summer  night  I  shall  visit  the  Parthenon  and  find 
my  old  friend  writing  Greek  dramas  in  the  moon 
light. 

After  that  my  old  gentlemen  began  to  come  in 
pairs  and  trios,  so  that  they  seldom  threw  such  a 
clearly  focused  memory.  The  one  whom  I  loved 
best  was  not  really  the  best  known ;  we  were  both 

232 


A  MEMORY  OF  OLD  GENTLEMEN 

too  shy  to  realize  in  time  how  much  we  might 
have  been  to  each  other.  He  was  a  gentle,  quiet, 
courtly  man;  I  remember  that  I  always  involun 
tarily  looked  for  the  pages  holding  up  my  court 
train  of  velvet  and  ermine  when  he  bowed  to  me : 
a  scholarly  man,  whom  one  would  have  taken  for 
some  gifted  professor  or  polished  diplomat:  and 
he  was  in  fact  an  Indian  scout,  known  the  length 
of  the  West  for  his  courage  and  fidelity  and  un 
shakable  honor.  He  would  have  stood  with  his 
life  to  a  promise  given  the  blackest  renegade  that 
ever  harried  his  trail. 

I  knew  in  a  vague  way  that  his  was  a  name  in 
history;  but  we  were  always  too  busy  with  Sir 
Edwin  Arnold  and  the  Vedas  and  Mahatmas  to 
talk  of  that.  I  can  see  him  now  throwing  back  the 
silver  hair  from  a  face  as  fine  as  some  old  marble 
Jove,  and  repeating  the  Sanskrit  tales  or  the  lines 
he  loved  best :  - 

'  Such  as  thou  shalt  see  not  self-subduing  do  no  deed  of  good, 
In  youth  or  age,  in  household  or  in  wood: 
It  needs  not  man  should  pass  by  th'  Orders  Four 
To  come  to  Virtue;  doing  right  is  more 
Than  to  be  twice  born :  therefore  wise  men  say 
Easy  and  excellent  is  Virtue's  way.' 

Fit  words  for  him  who  subdued  himself  with  such 
gentle  patience  to  years  of  blindness;  never  say 
ing  'Is  the  sun  shining?'  but  'How  beautiful  the 
hills  are  in  the  sunshine ! '  It  was  always  daylight 
in  his  soul,  till  he  slept  at  last  in  the  sunniest  cor 
ner  of  his  beloved  hills. 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

There  are  many  dear  old  gentlemen  still;  in 
deed,  now  that  I  think  of  it,  I  have  known  but 
one  young  man  at  all  intimately,  and  him  I  have 
not  met  face  to  face.  Homer  and  Odysseus  have 
been  such  satisfying  friends  to  me  that  I  have  not 
missed  Paris  and  Adonis.  The  flavor  of  old  wine 
has  been  too  long  on  my  lips  for  me  to  change  now, 
and  I  shall  be  well  content  to  have  it  said  of  me 
at  last:  ' Here  lieth  one  who  had  the  friendship  of 
old  men  and  little  children's  love. ' 


Viola's  Lovers 

A  Study  in  the  New  Morality 

By  Richard  Rowland  Kimball 

I  SOMETIMES  think  that  our  relations  with  our 
children,  or  our  pets,  are  successful  because  we 
expect  nothing  in  return.  Yet,  after  all,  the  rela 
tions  are  reciprocal ;  and  I  have  been  thinking  to 
day  of  some  of  the  things  I  have  got  from  an  old 
dog  who  has  been  in  our  family  for  years  and 
years.  I  have  learned  several  spiritual  truths  from 
her,  and  I  have  learned  them  more  thoroughly, 
perhaps,  because  she  never  had  the  slightest  idea 
that  she  was  teaching  me  anything.  Dogs,  of 
course,  show  various  characteristics  —  some  are 
snobs,  others  take  naturally  to  a  low  life,  others 
again  are  aristocratic  and  reticent  and  self-con 
trolled;  but  I  have  never  known  a  dog  yet  that 
you  could  describe  as  exactly  a  moralist. 

Viola  came  to  us  out  of  the  primeval  woods  with 
an  effect  of  apparitional  beauty.  Rather  a  poetic 
name  for  a  dog,  perhaps;  but  there  was  such  a 
union  of  grace  and  timidity,  such  a  charm  of  silken 
draperies  and  russet  ruff  and  tail  almost  sweeping 

235 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

the  ground,  that  we  were  irresistibly  reminded  of 
a  Viola  we  had  seen  recently.  It  was  as  if  the  dog 
said  mutely,  i  What  should  I  do  in  Illyria?' 

She  had  evidently  been  through  a  terrible  ex 
perience.  A  broken  rope  was  around  her  neck ;  she 
was  as  gaunt  as  a  wolf ;  her  eyes  were  almost  irides 
cent  with  terror,  like  the  wonderful  eyes  of  some 
hysteriacs. 

Imprison  her  soft  hand  and  let  her  rave, 
And  feed  deep,  deep  upon  her  peerless  eyes! 

We  did  not  adopt  Viola ;  she  adopted  us.  She 
followed  us  to  the  tent  where  we  were  spending 
the  summer,  and  there  she  stayed  with  us,  to  re 
main  on  guard  when  we  were  away,  to  welcome 
us  on  our  return  with  such  a  show  of  abject  grati 
tude.  I  think  a  male  dog  could  not  have  shown 
such  a  union  of  love  and  fear;  her  spirit  had  evi 
dently  been  broken;  it  became  our  task  to  lure 
her  confidence  back  again  —  and  here  began  my 
own  education.  If  I  spoke  with  —  well,  decision 
to  my  wife,  poor  Viola  slunk  to  the  ground.  She 
thought  the  tone  was  meant  for  her.  I  would 
never  claim  to  be  a  model  husband,  but  I  did 
learn  from  Viola,  theoretically  at  least,  that  one 
can  have  good  manners  even  in  the  privacy  of  the 
family  circle. 

More  rapidly  than  we  could  have  expected 
Viola's  terrors  left  her,  and  she  resumed  the  nor- 
mal'caninex outlook  on  life- — like  humans  I  have 
known  who  have  managed  to  counteract  the  false 

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VIOLA'S  LOVERS 

starts  of  their  early  childhood  —  obsessions  re 
garding  dark  closets,  snakes,  or  an  avenging 
Deity. 

I  am  not  going  to  dwell  on  the  intelligence  Viola 
manifested  after  she  had  freed  herself  from  fear. 
All  dogs  are  wonderful,  even  when  they  are  not 
intelligent.  The  most  stupid  dog  I  know  mopes 
around  the  house  and  refuses  to  eat  whenever  his 
master  is  away,  thus  evincing  an  emotional  sensi 
bility  more  valuable  than  the  smartness  of  the 
most  Frenchified  of  poodles  that  ever  trod  the 
vaudeville  stage.  Unlike  a  collie  of  my  acquaint 
ance,  Viola  did  not  keep  the  woodbox  replenished ; 
nor  had  she  a  vocabulary  of  several  hundred 
words,  like  another  collie  that  I  know.  Still,  she 
had  an  aptitude  to  learn  spelling.  When  it  was 
inadvisable  to  take  her  out  for  a  walk,  we  spelled 
the  words,  vainly  trying  to  conceal  the  fact  from 
her,  as  we  would  from  a  child ;  and  often,  to  this 
day,  people  stop  me  on  the  road,  and  ask  if  I  am 
the  owner  of  the  dog  that  knows  how  to  spell. 

What  I  want  to  dwell  on  is  my  own  education 
rather  than  Viola's,  and  this  began  in  earnest  after 
we  had  moved  to  the  real  country,  and  lived  in  a 
little  farmhouse  without  any  farm.  Viola  was  a 
lovely  ornament  to  the  dooryard ;  but  it  seemed  a 
pity  that  there  were  no  flocks  or  herds  to  evoke 
her  ministering  care.  We  didn't  even  keep  chick 
ens  ;  we  were  ostensibly  in  the  country  to  cultivate 
thoughts,  —  such  as  they  were,  —  and  while  Viola 
might  be  said  to  inspire  thoughts,  they  hardly 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

gave  her  the  necessary  exercise.  A  collie  should 
have  a  run  of  ten  miles  every  day,  and  it  was  pa 
thetic  to  see  Viola  lying  in  the  dooryard,  ears 
erect,  eyes  eager,  watching,  waiting,  hoping  for 
something  to  happen.  I  should  not  be  surprised 
if  her  very  eagerness  attracted  the  thing  she 
longed  for. 

Our  next-door  neighbor,  a  man  fully  as  fond  of 
dogs  as  myself,  was  early  attracted  to  her.  He 
had  recently  lost  his  own  dog,  and  asked  if  he 
might  borrow  Viola  to  help  him  catch  his  chick 
ens,  and  if  she  might  accompany  him  on  the  long 
drive  he  took  every  day  through  the  countryside. 
With  perfect  good  will,  and  in  utter  innocence,  I 
consented.  Little  did  I  dream,  as  they  say  in  the 
novels,  of  what  lay  before  me. 

I  had  an  idea  that  Viola  would  understand  that 
she  was  merely  loaned  for  these  expeditions ;  that 
she  would  come  back  from  them  with  undimin- 
ished  loyalty,  grateful  to  me  for  having  given  her 
a  chance  for  exercise.  But  our  friendly  neighbor 
had  a  very  taking  way  with  dogs.  Aside  from  the 
wonderful  trips,  which  were  enough  to  turn  the 
head  of  any  collie,  he  knew  how  to  talk  dog-lan 
guage  better  than  I  did.  He  knew  how  to  pinch 
a  dog's  ear  in  the  most  seductive  manner.  With 
him,  doggishness  was  both  an  art  and  a  science. 

There  was  nothing  lovelier  than  the  sight  of 
Viola  rounding  up  the  chickens,  shepherding  them 
into  their  houses,  holding  down  a  recalcitrant 
pullet  with  her  paw,  or  bringing  in  her  mouth  a 

238 


VIOLA'S  LOVERS 

dowager  hen  to  her  foster-father.  If  I  had  the 
gift  of  a  sculptor  and  wished  to  carve  a  person 
ification  of  pride,  I  think  I  should  depict  Viola 
bringing  in  a  chicken  —  her  tail  aloft,  like  a 
plume  of  triumph,  her  eyes  shining,  stepping 
over  imaginary  obstacles  like  a  high-manege  horse 
with  an  air  of  dignity  that  was  really  ludicrous. 
If  an  unlucky  chicken  got  away  from  her,  away 
she  went  across  meadows,  and  over  walls,  her 
beautiful  voice  vibrating  through  the  landscape, 
sometimes  breaking  to  an  octave  higher  in  her 
excitement. 

It  was  fun  to  see  her  scour  ahead  of  the  wagon 
when  her  new  master  took  her  out  to  help  him 
pick  up  eggs.  It  was  charming  to  see  her  come 
home  sitting  on  the  seat  beside  him,  tired  but  still 
eager,  looking  to  right  and  left,  sniffing  the  air, 
learning  all  sorts  of  smell  secrets  which  are  closed 
forever  to  our  supposedly  superior  human  con 
sciousness.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  it  was  neces 
sary  for  me  to  go  next  door  to  get  her,  and  that 
she  followed  me  along  the  path  with  a  certain 
droopy  air  that  was  hardly  flattering? 

There  is  not  much  in  the  literary  life  that  would 
interest  an  outdoor  dog.  I  felt  somewhat  like  a 
dry-as-dust  professor  married  to  a  young  and 
attractive  wife  who  is  being  taken  to  all  the  routs 
and  parties  throughout  the  neighborhood  by  a 
disgustingly  youthful  and  handsome  cavalier.  I 
know  nothing  quite  so  shriveling  to  the  soul  as 
jealousy,  nor  anything  so  hard  to  fight  against. 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

I  reasoned  that  Viola's  expeditions  were  doing 
her  good,  that  I  ought  to  be  grateful  for  them,  and 
I  repeated  the  antediluvian  fallacy  that  my  jeal 
ousy  was  only  indicative  of  my  love.  Nothing 
that  I  could  say  to  myself  made  any  difference; 
and  if  I  were  in  danger  of  forgetting  how  I  felt, 
there  were  plenty  of  other  persons  to  remind  me. 

'Well,'  said  the  fisherman,  'I  guess  you  don't 
know  whether  that  dog  is  yours  or  Lysander's!' 
And  my  most  intimate  friend  remarked  genially, 
'If  I  had  a  dog,  I'd  want  it  to  be  my  dog,  or  I 
would  n't  want  to  have  any. ' 

It  was  bad  enough  to  bear  the  sympathy  of  the 
community;  it  was  worse  to  witness  the  triumph 
of  my  rival.  Often,  after  I  had  brought  home  the 
drooping  Viola,  Lysander  would  follow  after  her. 
Instantly  she  revived  like  flowers  in  water.  She 
smiled,  she  was  even  coquettish.  They  began  a 
lengthy  conversation  I  could  not  understand - 
little  sounds  from  him,  little  grunts  from  her.  If, 
by  any  chance,  through  a  belated  sense  of  duty, 
she  happened  to  remain  beside  my  chair,  he  sur 
reptitiously  snapped  his  fingers  and  made  little 
sucking  sounds  that  he  fancied  were  inaudible, 
and  then  she  sidled  over  to  his  chair. 

If  jealously  is  an  index  of  one's  love,  it  is 
strange  that,  the  more  jealous  I  became  of  Ly 
sander,  the  less  I  loved  Viola.  'Well,  let  her  stay 
with  him,'  I  said  to  myself.  'I  guess  he  won't 
object  to  having  me  pay  for  the  license. ' 

She  did  stay;  she  sometimes  stayed  all  night; 

240 


VIOLA'S  LOVERS 

and  few  things  in  my  life  have  been  more  humili 
ating  than  my  visits  to  get  her. 

Lysander  was  glad  to  see  me  —  oh  my,  yes! 
He  welcomed  me  with  a  crooked  sardonic  smile 
that  I  understood  thoroughly.  Viola  knew  just 
as  well  as  he  did  why  I  had  come,  and  pretended 
to  take  an  interest  in  the  wall-paper.  As  we 
walked  home  along  the  path,  I  scolded  her,  and 
she  slunk  to  the  ground  and  asked  my  pardon. 
Was  there  anything  in  her  life  that  could  make 
her  conscious  of  any  evil?  Of  course  not.  With 
out  realizing  it,  I  was  exercising  a  sort  of  spiritual 
coercion  over  her.  I  was  really  condemning  her 
for  what  was  a  true  expression  of  collie  life;  but 
she  accepted  my  suggestion  of  evil.  I  have  often 
wondered  since,  how  many  persons  in  the  human 
realm  are  suffering  from  a  sense  of  sin  as  false  as 
hers  was.  Of  course,  I  did  not  philosophize  the 
situation  at  the  time.  I  simply  felt  disquietude 
when  I  was  with  her.  This  disquietude  increased 
rapidly  until  I  apparently  disliked  her ;  and  I  sup 
pose  that  in  my  feeling  for  her  there  was  actually 
an  element  of  hate. 

'  Very  well, '  I  said  to  myself  in  effect,  '  there  are 
better  dogs  in  the  world  than  ever  were  licensed. 
The  next  one  I  get,  I'll  keep  for  my  very  own/ 

I  had  now  reached  my  low  spot  —  a  centre  of 
indifference;  and  if  this  were  fiction,  the  reader 
might  expect  an  ever-increasing  objective  cres 
cendo  from  this  point  onward,  culminating  in  a 
stirring  climax.  Possibly  Viola  would  rescue  me 

241 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

from  a  burning  building,  thus  showing  that  she 
really  loved  me,  after  all.  Unfortunately  I  am 
dealing  with  facts  of  a  rather  intangible  nature. 
I  have  noticed  that  in  life  coffee  and  pistols  for 
two  are  not  called  for  so  often  as  in  literature.  We 
pass  the  time  of  day  with  an  acquaintance,  dis 
cuss  the  play,  and  what  not,  little  dreaming  that 
behind  that  smiling  exterior  a  spiritual  crisis  may 
be  taking  place. 

My  crisis  was  rather  interesting  because  it 
seemed  almost  physical.  Not  so  much  in  the  sub 
conscious  brain  ganglia  as  in  the  sympathetic 
nerve-centres,  the  process  was  taking  place  — 
the  reverse  process  of  what  had  taken  place  dur 
ing  my  period  of  jealousy.  I  could  almost  hear  a 
spiritual  clicking  going  on  inside  me,  as  if  I  were 
composed  of  children's  blocks  which  had  become 
disarranged  and  were  being  replaced  in  a  sym 
metrical  pattern.  One  by  one,  the  filaments  of 
possession  were  being  broken  —r  that  sense  which 
in  its  grossest  terms  is  really  a  sort  of  fatuous 
pride.  Say  what  we  will,  most  of  us  feel  that  we 
deserve  praise  and  tribute  for  having  selected  so 
attractive  a  wife,  for  having  begotten  such  charm 
ing  children,. --Having  no  longer  any  more  of  a 
proprietary  interest  in  Viola  than  I  had  in  the 
wild  flowers,  or  the  sea,  or  sky,  I  got  a  fresh  eye 
on  her.  I  could  not  help  admiring  her,  and  I 
could  not  help  admiring  her  for  herself  alone. 
Having  no  longer  any  taint  of  possession,  it  was 
impossible  for  me  to  impose  my  will  on  her,  so  I 

242 


VIOLA'S  LOVERS 

adopted  unconsciously  the  courtesy  one  shows  to 
some  one  else's  wife. 

'Well,  Viola,'  I  would  say,  'do  you  want  to 
come  home  to-night?  You  don't  have  to. ' 

She  would  look  up  and  listen,  cock  her  ears, 
consider  the  matter.  Sometimes  she  would  de 
cide  to  stay  with  Lysander,  and  sometimes, 
strangely  enough,  she  would  decide  to  go  home 
with  me.  If  she  came,  she  came  happily,  because 
she  was  exercising  the  prerogative  of  an  inde 
pendent  creature.  Her  sense  of  sin  or  shame  left 
her;  and  somehow  we  were  all  gainers,  Lysander, 
Viola,  and  myself.  He  no  longer  snapped  his  fin 
gers  or  made  little  sucking  noises.  These  had 
been  psychical  reactions  from  my  jealous  emana 
tions  when  we  were  struggling  for  Viola's  favor; 
but  we  were  now  united  in  doing  what  we  could 
to  make  her  happy;  and  our  friendship,  which 
had  suffered  previously,  in  this  new  office  became 
confirmed.  What  expansive  talks  we  had  about 
her!  How  he  rushed  over  to  tell  me  the  latest 
example  of  her  wisdom  or  affection ;  and  when  one 
expects  nothing  from  a  dog,  it  is  rather  pleasant 
to  feel  suddenly,  while  struggling  with  a  sentence, 
a  damp  delightful  nose  inside  your  hand. 

Sometimes  I  fancy  that  Viola,  in  forming  her 
friendship  for  Lysander,  had  a  prevision;  for  the 
time  came  when  we  had  to  leave  her,  and  in  whose 
hands  could  it  be  better  to  leave  her  than  Ly- 
sander's  and  his  wife's? 

Most  dog  stones  end  with  the  death  of  the  dog, 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

but  I  can  assure  the  reader  that  Viola  is  still  very 
much  alive.  Not  agile  any  longer,  she  has  become 
a  privileged  parlor  guest,  for  the  stairs  are  too 
much  for  her.  Sometimes  she  even  finds  it  im 
possible  to  bury  a  bone,  and  then  she  goes  through 
the  pantomime  of  burying  it.  She  knows  that  we 
know  that  she  has  not  really  done  it.  Her  assump 
tion  of  achievement  is  ludicrous.  Who  says  dogs 
have  not  a  sense  of  humor? 

She  is  beautiful  as  old  ladies  are  beautiful.  If 
she  wore  a  lace  stomacher,  she  would  make  a 
magnificent  Rembrandt  —  rich  browns,  tawny 
gold,  and,  in  the  heart  of  the  picture,  the  spirit  of 
her  personality  as  mellow  and  pervasive  as  a 
flame. 

I  don't  see  Viola  often  nowadays,  but  what  I 
gained  by  renouncing  a  purely  personal  interest 
in  her  has  extended  itself  somehow  beyond  what 
we  know  as  the  realm  of  time  and  space.  This 
sounds  rather  esoteric,  but  what  I  mean  is  that  I 
am  very  happy  whenever  I  think  of  her,  whether 
I  am  with  her  or  not.  I  feel  very  near  her  though 
we  are  separated  by  a  hundred  miles ;  and  I  should 
not  be  surprised  if,  in  the  muffled  '  Woof !  Woof ! ' 
of  her  dreams,  she  often  lives  again  what  I  happen 
to  be  thinking  of  at  the  moment  —  wonderful 
runs  with  Teddy,  the  cocker  spaniel,  or  the  ho- 
meric  combat  with  the  woodchuck  beside  Simon 
Brook. 

As  I  sit  thinking  of  Viola,  there  happens  to 
come  into  my  mind,  by  one  of  those  odd  associa- 

244 


VIOLA'S  LOVERS 

tions  that  have  so  little  logic  in  them,  an  appar 
ently  trivial  incident  that  took  place  a  day  or  so 
ago.  A  couple  of  little  girls  stopped  me  on  Arling 
ton  Street,  Boston,  and  asked  the  way  to  Marl 
boro  Street.  It  chanced  that  I  was  going  to  Marl 
boro  Street  myself,  and  I  offered  to  conduct  them 
there,  but  they  were  walking  in  the  leisurely  way 
of  children,  taking  in  everything  on  the  way,  and 
I  soon  outstripped  them.  At  the  corner  of  Marl 
boro  Street,  however,  I  turned  and  waved  to  them 
to  indicate  that  this  was  the  street  they  wanted, 
and  they  waved  back  to  show  that  they  under 
stood. 

That  was  apparently  the  end  of  the  incident; 
but  two  or  three  blocks  up  Marlboro  Street,  some 
thing  impelled  me  to  turn.  The  children  had 
found  the  street,  they  were  following  safely,  they 
were  evidently  watching  me;  for  as  soon  as  I 
turned,  they  waved  again.  As  I  went  up  the 
steps  of  the  house  where  I  had  an  appointment,  I 
looked  back  for  the  third  time.  The  children, 
now  become  almost  fairy-like  figures,  were  still 
watching  me.  Up  went  their  hands  and  up  went 
mine,  and  across  the  long  length  of  city  street,  we 
waved  in  greeting  and  farewell. 

I  do  not  know  why  the  incident  should  have 
seemed  to  contain  an  element  of  real  beauty.  I 
was  reminded  of  George  E.  Woodberry's  poem  in 
which  a  somewhat  similar  incident  is  celebrated. 
A  boy,  you  remember,  while  playing,  ran  heed 
lessly  into  the  poet,  and  the  poem  ends,  - 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

It  was  only  the  clinging  touch 

Of  a  child  in  a  city  street; 

It  hath  made  the  whole  day  sweet. 

What  struck  me  even  more  than  the  beauty  of 
my  adventure  was  the  quality  of  permanence 
that  it  seemed  to  wear.  In  my  under-conscious- 
ness,  there  was  something  immortal  about  it. 
Can  it  be  possible  that  our  casual  relations,  where 
love  is,  —  our  relations  with  children,  or  with 
strangers  whom  we  shall  never  see  again,  or  with 
the  lower  animals  whose  span  of  life  is  necessarily 
very  limited,  —  can  it  be  possible  that  these  rela 
tions  are  less  ephemeral  than  we  think?  Would 
it  be  too  much  to  hope  that  the  relation  between 
Viola  and  myself  is  a  small  but  permanent  addi 
tion  to  the  store  of  worth-while  things? 


Haunted  Lives 

By  Laura  Spencer  Portor 


IT  is  my  increasing  belief,  to  which  the  careful 
observation  and  study  of  years  give  strength, 
that  all  lives  may  be  said  to  be  haunted  in  greater 
or  less  degree  by  certain  recurrent  thoughts  or 
influences  or  impressions  or  realizations,  which, 
visiting  and  revisiting  the  chambers  of  the  mind, 
probably  from  earliest  years,  come  at  last  to 
dwell  persistently  with  us,  returning  again  and 
again  like  the  French  ghostly  revenants,  making 
free  to  haunt  those  long-closed  rooms  of  the  mem 
ory  where  once,  it  may  be,  they  moved  in  the  full 
daylight  of  consciousness  and  realization,  as  de 
lights  or  dreads,  joys  or  terrors  of  the  soul. 

Two  ideas,'  says  Pater,  in  writing  of  Leonardo, 
'  were  especially  fixed  in  him,  as  reflexes  of  things 
that  touched  his  brain  in  childhood  beyond  the 
measure  of  other  impressions  —  the  smiling  of 
women,  and  the  motion  of  great  waters.'  And 
later  on,  '  He  became  above  all  a  painter  of  por 
traits;  faces  of  a  modeling  more  skillful  than  has 
been  seen  before  or  since,  embodied  with  a  reality 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

which  almost  amounts  to  illusion  on  dark  air.  To 
take  a  character  as  it  was,  and  delicately  sound  its 
stops,  suited  one  so  curious  in  observation,  curious 
in  invention.' 

So  we  seem  to  see  Leonardo  possessed  always 
by  the  interest  and  beauty  and  meaning  of  faces, 
fascinated  by  the  individuality,  the  infinite  va 
riety,  the  delicately  interpretative  meanings  of 
them;  reminiscent  of  the  charm  of  them;  visited 
by  a  hundred  recurrent  lovelinesses  of  them ;  pre 
occupied  by  their  mystery;  and  above  all,  it 
seems,  haunted  and  summoned  by  the  lovely  and 
enigmatic  smiling  of  women. 

To  recognize  this  is  to  know  much  of  Leonardo 
and  his  work;  and  even  if  we  read  no  more  of  Pater's 
memorable  essay,  he  has  succeeded  in  these  three 
sentences  in  bringing  before  us  some  impression 
of  the  essential  man  which  is  not  readily  forgotten, 
and  has  admitted  us  as  it  were  to  a  partial  know 
ledge  of  that  great  and  diverse  mind. 

But  all  this  is  rare,  very  rare  in  biography. 
We  write  biography,  for  the  most  part,  as  we 
write  history  —  with  a  leaning  toward  dates  and 
successions  of  events. 

M.  Taine  in  the  introduction  to  his  History  of 
English  Literature  makes  a  strong  protest,  it  will 
be  remembered,  against  this  method  of  writing 
history.  He  cites  Carlyle's  Cromwell  and  Sainte- 
Beuve's  Port  Royal  as  examples  of  the  opposite 
and  more  modern  method.  In  these  event  and 
happening  are  given  but  secondary  place ;  in  these 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

it  is  always  rather  the  subtle  underyling  causes 
which  are  touched  on  with  particular  insistence. 
It  is  the  tragedy  of  the  soul  of  Cromwell  which  is 
so  memorably  recorded  by  Carlyle ;  and  by  Sainte- 
Beuve  it  is  the  intricate  psychology  of  an  entire 
institution  which  is  laid  bare. 

It  is  according  to  this  method,  Taine  argues, 
not  only  that  history  should  be  written,  but  also 
that  we  should  study  the  literature  of  any  nation. 
He  then  proceeds  through  his  several  volumes 
to  his  memorable  consideration  of  English  litera 
ture,  dwelling  repeatedly  on  the  psychology  of 
the  English  people  as  it  manifests  itself  in  their 
literature.  He  calls  attention  again  and  again  to 
certain  recurring  ideas  or  ideals  which  manifest 
themselves  persistently  in  this  particular  race, 
which  haunt  it  almost  as  an  individual  is  haunted 
by  certain  not  always  definite,  yet  strongly  for 
mative  influences. 

All  this  is  not  very  new  in  substance,  yet  in  ap 
plication  it  belongs  distinctly  to  modern  times. 
It  falls  in  with  the  spirit  of  research  and  inquiry 
so  active  in  the  past  half  century,  and  announces 
as  with  prophetic  voice  —  for  it  was  written  as 
much  as  fifty  years  ago  —  the  psychology  of  na 
tions,  of  which  we  only  lately  begin  to  speak  with 
real  seriousness. 

We  have  long  admitted,  it  is  true,  a  certain 
psychology  of  eras  —  a  kind  of  '  soul '  of  certain 
times,  or  'spirit'  of  certain  ages,  manifesting  it 
self  diversely  in  diverse  periods.  And,  quite  as 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

the  name  of  an  individual  not  alone  summons  to 
the  mind  that  individual  and  no  other,  but  con 
notes  a  particular  personality,  so  such  wide 
phrases  as  'The  Elizabethan  Age,'  'The  Renais 
sance,'  'The  Homeric  Age,'  the  'Age  of  Chiv 
alry'  do  not  alone  designate  certain  ages,  but  in 
each  case  connote  some  essential  quality  which 
went  to  render  that  particular  age  memorable 
and  significant.  This  quality  is  found  to  be  in 
every  instance  dependent  upon  some  idea  or  ideal 
which,  drawing  its  power  often  from  unremarked 
and  not  always  discoverable  sources,  moulds  and 
fashions  the  thought  and  motives  of  the  times. 

So  the  art,  the  science,  the  religion,  the  philos 
ophy  of  any  given  age,  all  these  do  but  flower 
from  causes  that  have  their  roots  deep  under  the 
surface ;  and  he  who  would  acquaint  himself  with 
any  notable  period  must  study,  not  so  much  the 
outward  and  obvious  facts  and  happenings  of  that 
period,  as  the  hidden  and  subtle  forces  lying  be 
neath  all  these. 

But  if  the  true  history  of  a  people  cannot  be 
given,  or  the  true  spirit  of  an  era  be  revealed  by  a 
mere  citing  of  events,  however  important  or  care 
fully  chosen,  what  shall  be  said  of  the  futility  of 
studying  that  infinitely  more  delicate  thing,  the 
history  of  a  human  soul,  by  method  of  index  and 
compilation?  Yet  that  is  precisely  what  much  of 
our  accepted  and  well-credited  biography  amount 
to,  and  we  have  little  of  what  might  be  called  the 
more  modern  method.  One  looks  in  vain  in  the 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

average  Lives  of  great  men  for  any  careful  con 
sideration  or  analysis  of  the  remote  causes  or 
springs  of  personality. 

Certain  biographical  facts  are,  it  would  seem, 
expected  and  provided.  These  facts  the  average 
biographer  sets  out  in  a  perfectly  conventional 
order,  somewhat  as  the  host  of  the  conventional 
inn  —  I  hope  I  may  be  forgiven  the  comparison  — 
sets  out  the  usual  table  d'hote  in  certain  courses 
time-honored  and  anticipated.  If  the  biographer 
is  a  well-known  man,  -  -  if  this  be  at  the  sign  of 
Chesterton,  or  Colvin,  or  Birrell,  or  Gosse,  —  then 
there  will  be  added,  without  extra  cost,  the 
sprightly  light  wine  of  easy  style. 

In  a  well-knowrn  biography  of  Hawthorne  we 
have  for  chapter  titles  the  following:  'Early 
Years';  'Early  Manhood';  'Early  Writings'; 
'Brook  Farm  and  Concord';  'The  Three  Ameri 
can  Novels' ; '  England  and  Italy' ; ' Last  Years. ' 

In  an  equally  well-known  life  of  Keats,  —  and 
in  lieu  of  something  better  it  is  perhaps  the  least 
unsatisfactory  of  them  all,  —  we  have,  among 
other  page  and  chapter  headings:  'Leigh  Hunt'; 
'Determination  to  Publish';  'Poems  of  1817'; 
'Margate*;  'Winter  at  Hampstead';  'Doubts  of 
Success';  'Northern  Tour';  'Absorption  in  Love 
and  Poetry';  'Haydon  and  Money  Difficulties'; 
1  The  Odes';  'The  Plays';  'Recast  of  Hyperion'; 
'Last  Days  and  Death.'  It  is  true  that  there 
comes  a  whole  chapter  at  the  very  last,  under  the 
promising  title,  '  Character  and  Genius' ;  but  read- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ing  it  hopefully,  one  finds  but  talk  of  'self-con 
trol/  *  sweetness  of  disposition/  'sympathy,' 
1  good  sense, '  '  honor, ' '  manliness '  -  -  with  a  some 
what  hackneyed  reference  to  the  Greek  purity 
and  the  mediaeval  richness  of  imagery  which  char 
acterize  Keat's  poetry,  and  a  few  words  concern 
ing  his  influence  on  a  later  age. 

Now,  considering  the  vivid  and  marvelous 
personality  of  the  man,  if  these  be  not  the  bare 
bones  and  laboratory  skeletons  of  biography,  then 
I  do  not  know  bare  bones  or  skeletons  when  I 
have  sight  of  them. 

No  one  questions  that  these  are  helpful  if  one 
is  studying  anatomy;  that  they  may  even  be  ad 
mitted  as  necessary  to  an  understanding  of  that 
timely  temple  of  abode  in  which  the  fiery  spirit 
for  a  while  took  up  its  residence ;  but  to  call  this  a 
'life'  of  the  man,  which  gives  so  little  knowledge 
of  his  spirit's  habits  of  living! 

If  I  turn  to  a  little  volume  of  Shelley  on  my 
table,  where  only  eighteen  small  pages  out  of  five 
hundred  and  ninety-two  are  devoted,  as  it  hap 
pens,  to  the  same  subject,  and  only  at  that  to 
the  closing  incident  of  Keats' s  career,  —  his  un 
timely  death,  —  I  find  him  spoken  of  in  some 
what  more  adequate  fashion. 

I  shall  not  quote  the  words  metred  out  in  verse, 
as  they  stand  in  the  volume,  but  shall  ask  to  be 
allowed  to  set  them  down  as  if  they  were  mere 
running  prose,  as  follows :  — 

For  he  is  gone  where  all  things  wise  and  fair  descend. 
252 


HAUNTED  LIVES 

So  much  for  the  sense  of  shining  and  resplen 
dent  peace  that  comes  with  the  going  of  so  large  a 
spirit!  But  let  us  read  on.  It  is  Urania  now  who 
is  addressed  concerning  the  poet :  - 

Thy  youngest  dearest  one  has  perished ;  thy  extreme  hope, 
the  loveliest  and  the  last.  The  bloom  whose  petals,  nipt  be 
fore  they  blew,  died  in  the  promise  of  the  fruit,  is  waste;  the 
broken  lily  lies  —  the  storm  is  overpast.  The  quick  Dreams, 
the  passion-winged  ministers  of  thought,  who  were  his  flocks, 
whom  near  the  living  streams  of  his  young  spirit  he  fed,  and 
whom  he  taught  the  love  which  was  its  music,  wander  not, 
wander  no  more.  .  .  .  And  one  with  trembling  hand  clasps 
his  cold  head,  and  fans  him  with  her  moonlight  wings,  and 
cries:  'Our  love,  our  hope,  our  sorrow  is  not  dead;  see  on  the 
silken  fringe  of  his  faint  eyes,  like  dew  upon  a  sleeping  flower, 
there  lies  a  tear  some  Dream  has  loosened  from  his  brain.' 
.  .  .  And  others  came,  — Desires  and  Adorations,  Winged 
Persuasions,  and  Veiled  Destinies,  Splendors  and  Glooms  and 
glimmering  Incarnations  of  hopes  and  fears  and  twilight  Phan 
tasies  ...  all  he  had  loved  and  moulded  into  thought  from 
shape,  and  hue  and  odor  and  sweet  sound,  lamented  AdonaVs. 
.  .  .  He  is  made  one  with  Nature;  there  is  heard  his  voice  in 
all  her  music,  from  the  moan  of  thunder  to  the  song  of  night's 
sweet  bird ;  he  is  a  presence  to  be  felt  and  known  in  darkness 
and  in  light,  from  herb  and  stone,  spreading  itself  where'er 
that  Power  may  move  which  has  withdrawn  his  being  to  its 
own;  ...  he  is  a  portion  of  the  loveliness  which  once  he  made 
more  lovely ;  ...  he  is  gathered  to  the  kings  of  thoughts  who 
waged  contention  with  their  times'  decay,  and  of  the  past  are 
all  that  cannot  pass  away. 

And  this  further,  this  little  bit  about  the  poet's 
grave :  - 

Here  pause,  these  graves  are  all  too  young  as  yet,  to  have 
outgrown  the  sorrow  which  consigned  its  charge  to  each ;  and 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

if  the  seal  is  set,  here,  on  one  fountain  of  a  mourning  mind, 
break  it  not  thou!  .  .  .  From  the  world's  bitter  wind  seek 
shelter  in  the  shadows  of  the  tomb.  What  Adona'is  is,  why 
fear  we  to  become? 

It  will  be  objected  that  this  is  not  biography  at 
all,  but  poetry,  and  very  famous  poetry  at  that. 
I  am  aware,  full  aware  of  it.  I  have  only  to  re 
mark  that,  since  there  is  a  beating  upon  the  gates 
and  the  starved  people  demand  bread  and  there 
is  none,  *  Why  then,  let  them  eat  cake ! '  There  is 
perhaps  more  pure  essence  of  biography  in  lines 
like  these,  which  purport  not  to  be  biography  at 
all,  than  in  any  pompous  three-volume  'Life, ' 
which  comes  decked  in  scarlet,  and  heralded  by 
the  trumpet-blasts  of  publishers  well  versed  in 
the  psychology  of  advertising. 

Or  take  all  these  supreme  lines  away  and  leave 
me  but  that  one  by  the  same  hand,  'The  soul  of 
Adona'is  like  a  star, '  and  I  am  not  sure  that  I  am 
not  richer  by  that,  than  by  many  biographical 
chapters. 

II 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the  best  pos 
sible  biographer,  even  including  the  immortal 
Boswell,  would  have  been  Horatio.  Ophelia 
might  have  been  better  still  had  she  kept  her  poor 
senses.  Even  having  lost  them,  she  seems  to  do 
no  less  than  draw  back  a  shimmering  veil  from 
the  soul  and  life  of  Hamlet  in  the  few  remarks  she 
makes  concerning  him:  'Where  is  the  beauteous 
majesty  of  Denmark?' 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

Horatio,  never  having  dreamed,  certainly,  of 
writing  an  account  of  Hamlet's  life  at  all,  yet 
seems  to  set  forth  in  his  few  words  more  of  Ham 
let  than  is  to  be  found  in  all  the  commentaries. 
What  is  there  not  revealed  in  his  'Here,  sweet 
lord,  at  your  service, '  and  his  '  O  my  dear  lord ! ' 

There  is  further  evidence  of  his  qualification, 
of  course,  in  Hamlet's  unforgettable  words  con 
cerning  him :  — 

'  Horatio,  thou  art  e'en  as  just  a  man 
As  e'r  my  conversation  coped  withal. ' 

and  at  the  very  last,  - 

'Horatio,  I  am  dead, 

Thou  livest ;  report  me  and  my  cause  aright 
To  the  unsatisfied.' 

But  that  which  fits  Horatio  more  than  all,  it 
seems  to  me,  to  bring  report  to  others  concerning 
the  life,  the  motives  and  character  of  his  *  sweet 
lord, '  is  that  he  had  long  been  aware  of  those  fear 
ful  and  familiar  hauntings  of  his  lord's  mind  — 
hauntings  which,  for  the  purposes  of  the  play, 
must  be  dramatized  into  the  very  form  of  a  ghost, 
but  which  were  in  reality  something  far  subtler 
still,  and  less  bodied.  It  was  of  these  delicate  and 
awful  visitings  that  Horatio  was,  more  than  the 
rest,  aware  and  sensitively  expectant. 

It  is  such  an  eagerness,  such  an  expectancy,  and 
such  an  ability  as  well,  I  take  it,  that  are  needed 
by  him  who  would  understand  the  life  of  any 
great  man  and  would  hope  to  interpret  it  to 

255 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

others.  He  who  would  give  us  an  adequate  study 
of  any  life  whatsoever  must,  it  would  seem, 
reckon  on  and  investigate  those  subtle  hauntings 
of  mind  and  spirit  of  which  the  biographers  have 
as  yet,  apparently,  taken  so  little  account,  hav 
ing  left  such  investigations  to  be  followed,  and 
that  only  along  somewhat  morbid  lines,  by  the 
psychiatrists  and  psycho-analysts. 

For  these,  it  is  true,  have  recognized  clearly 
that  there  are  such  hauntings,  though  they  do 
not  call  them  such.  It  is  recognized  by  them 
that  there  is  frequently  an  unconscious  retention 
by  the  mind,  and  a  repression  within  the  uncon 
scious  self,  of  former  striking  and  formative  ex 
periences.  Freud  and  his  followers  tell  us  that  an 
unpleasant  or  shocking  experience,  long  dead  to 
the  conscious  memory,  may  nevertheless  return 
to  haunt  and  newly  shock  and  distress  us  when 
consciousness  sleeps.  In  dreams  it  is,  they  tell  us, 
that  morbid  fears  or  hateful  repressions  or  unlaw 
ful  desires  of  all  kinds  return  to  move  where  they 
will,  unhindered  and  invulnerable.  In  whatever 
scientific  or  psychologic  terms  we  speak  of  these 
things,  it  all  sounds  very  ghostlike,  and  the  more 
so  when  one  recalls  that  these  haunting  mani 
festations  vanish  at  the  awaking  to  conscious 
ness,  as  ghosts  at  the  crowing  of  the  cock;  then, 
be  it  ghost  or  old  repression,  '  the  extravagant  and 
erring  spirit  hies  to  his  confines'  once  more. 

The  avowed  task  of  the  Freud  school  is  the 
anticipation,  the  expectation,  and  at  last  the  care- 

256 


HAUNTED  LIVES 

ful  analysis  of  these  morbid  hauntings,  these  re 
pressions  and  forbidden  desires.  It  is  the  self- 
appointed  task  of  the  psycho-analyst  to  watch  for 
these  things,  to  recognize  them,  speak  with  them, 
and  examine  into  their  meanings  and  purposes,  as 
Hamlet  with  the  ghost  of  his  father  on  the  battle 
ments  of  Elsinore.  All  this  has  been  looked  upon 
—  rightly,  no  doubt  —  as  epoch-making  in  the 
history  of  psychology,  and  more  especially  as  it 
applies  to  the  study  and  treatment  of  nervous 
and  mental  disorders. 

But  to  deal  only  with  the  morbid  hauntings  of 
the  mind  is  to  look  upon  the  gloom  and  night  of 
things  only.  For,  by  the  same  token,  it  would 
seem  there  must  be  other  presences  not  mor 
bid;  other  haunting  influences,  not  dreadful,  but 
lovely.  There  must  be  without  doubt  many  an 
exquisite  or  startling  experience  or  impression, 
long  since  passed  over  into  the  world  of  our  dead 
memories  —  perhaps  the  frail  beauty  of  flower 
or  leaf,  some  unearthly  delicacy  of  laced  moon 
light  on  the  floor  of  the  forest,  the  spaciousness  of 
dawn,  the  beauty  of  women,  the  kindly  clinging 
touch  of  hands  —  some  impression  which  found 
in  us,  in  early  youth  it  may  be,  a  congenial  abode, 
and  returning  to  us  again  and  again  (never  in  the 
full  daylight  of  consciousness,  but  in  a  dim  and 
twilight  fashion,  in  some  delicate  haunting  form 
'  as  the  air  invulnerable ') ,  obtains  at  last  a  ghostly 
possession  of  some  chamber  of  the  mind,  holds 
from  there  a  kind  of  subtle  occupancy  of  our 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

thoughts,  in  time  a  sort  of  dominion  over  our  per 
sonalities,  and  even  at  last,  it  must  be,  exerts  a 
definite  influence  upon  our  characters. 

For  it  is  precisely  the  exact  and  delicate  re 
sponse  to  such  subtle  visitings,  whether  it  be  a 
visiting  of  fear  and  dread  or  of  beauty  and  de 
light,  which,  expressing  itself  in  the  individual's 
manner  of  living  and  taste  for  life,  we  call  per 
sonality;  which,  manifesting  itself  in  his  art,  we 
call  style;  which,  exhibiting  itself  in  his  purpose 
and  action,  we  call  character. 

It  is  in  this  sense,  then,  that  the  lives  of  all  of  us, 
and  very  especially  the  lives  of  the  great,  may, 
without  fantastical  imagery,  be  said  to  be  haunted. 
And  if  this  be  true,  then  it  is  obvious  that,  with 
out  reference  to  such  hauntings,  no  so-called  'lives' 
or  biographies  of  great  men  can  be  complete. 

in 

It  seems  likely  that  the  new  criticism  must 
more  and  more  take  into  account  these  delicate 
and  psychological  reckonings;  but  meanwhile 
how  shall  we,  the  unelect,  seeking  unacademically 
among  the  lives  of  the  great,  become  aware  of 
these  subtle  influences  which  forever  haunt  the 
characters  and  the  works  of  great  men?  How 
shall  we  put  ourselves  sensitively  in  touch  with 
that  which  is  so  essentially  characteristic;  with 
those  mysterious  influences  of  personality  which, 
working  together,  make,  for  instance,  a  poem  of 
Arnold's 'a  poem  of  Arnold's  unmistakably,  and 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

a  painting  of  Raphael's  so  much  his  own  that  we 
are  wont  to  speak  of  it  as  '  a  Raphael '  ? 

Again  I  turn  to  Horatio.  There  must  first  of 
all  be  in  us,  I  believe,  a  deep  love  of  the  men  whom 
we  would  know  —  *O  my  sweet  lord !'  There 
must  be  on  our  part  all  that  loyal  and  watchful 
friendship  which  would  make  any  hearsay  or  re 
port  concerning  them  a  matter  of  interest  to  us; 
further,  there  must  be  that  full  intimate  compan 
ionship  to  be  had,  not  by  hearsay  at  all,  but  only 
by  living  day  after  day  with  these  men  and  their 
works;  and  lastly,  there  must  be  in  us  a  sensitive 
ness  to  spiritual  and  haunting  presences  in  their 
lives  —  a  patient  and  sensitive  watching  as  it 
were  upon  the  battlements  of  Elsinore. 

If  we  turn  from  Leonardo,  as  Pater  presents 
him  to  us,  to  another  notable  and  equally  strong 
type  —  to  Isaiah;  if  we  ignore  all  those  facts  usu 
ally  insisted  upon  in  biography;  if  we  dismiss  as 
less  important  the  kings  and  rulers  of  his  age  and 
the  dramatic  yet  negligible  circumstances  of  his 
times;  and  if  we  give  our  attention  rather  to  the 
subtle  predilections  and  preoccupations  of  this 
great  mind,  we  find  Isaiah  visited  again  and  again, 
haunted  unceasingly  it  would  seem,  by  certain 
effects  and  meanings,  and  lovelinesses  and  mem 
ories  of  light. 

Again  and  again  we  see  him  sensitive  to  its 
manifestations.  Here  and  there  throughout  his 
writings  we  find  him  noting  and  delighting  in  its 
return,  greeting  it  with  relief  and  rejoicing,  as 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

after  a  long  night's  watching;  calling  to  his 
people  passionately  to  arise  and  waken  from  the 
darkness  of  their  sins,  holding  up  his  own  stream 
ing  torch,  as  it  were,  across  their  night,  in  shining 
prophecy  of  the  better  luminary  already  on  the 
way,  which  was  to  be  the  light  of  the  world. 

*  Arise !  Shine ! '  he  cries,  '  for  thy  light  is  come 
and  the  glory  of  the  Lord  is  risen  upon  thee.  .  .  . 
The  People  that  walked  in  darkness  have  seen  a 
great  light;  they  that  dwell  in  the  land  of  the 
shadow  of  death,  upon  them  hath  the  light  shined. 
.  .  .  Then  shall  thy  light  break  forth  as  the  morn 
ing.  .  .  .  And  the  Gentiles  shall  come  to  thy  light, 
and  kings  to  the  brightness  of  thy  rising.  .  .  .  The 
Lord  shall  be  to  thee  an  everlasting  light,  and  thy 
God  thy  glory.  .  .  .  The  sun  shall  no  more  go 
down,  neither  shall  thy  moon  withdraw  herself. ' 

His  mention  also  of  trees  and  their  boughs  and 
roots  and  branches  is  even  more  frequent  still. 
Here,  likewise,  'two  ideas'  seem  'especially  fixed 
in  him  as  reflexes  of  things  that  touched  his  brain 
in  childhood  beyond  the  measure  of  other  impres 
sions.  ' 

When  we  study  Dante  carefully  and  watch 
with  him  also,  we  find  him  to  have  been,  hardly 
less  than  Isaiah,  haunted  by  the  same  loveliness, 
the  beauty  and  meaning  of  light.  For  him  not 
less,  light  would  seem  to  have  had  a  most  insistent 
and  spiritual  appeal.  Far  too  many  to  quote  are 
his  innumerable  exact  and  sensitive  descriptions 
of  it,  his  careful  and  repeated  observations  of  its 

260 


HAUNTED  LIVES 

gradations  and  delicate  alterations.  Memorably, 
too,  he  has  it  in  mind  in  speaking  of  Saint  Francis 
of  Assisi,  that  sun  of  righteousness  risen  out  of  the 
mediaeval  night.  'Call  it  not  Assisi/  he  cries;  'if 
you  would  truthfully  name  it,  call  it  the  East  be 
cause  of  the  sun  that  rose  there.' 

Likewise,  one  who  watches  patiently  and  de 
votedly  with  Homer  cannot  but  become  sensible 
at  last  how  his  mind  entertains  constantly  the 
thought  and  moving  beauty  of  the  various  air. 
Perpetually,  it  must  have  been,  he  was  haunted 
by  the  freshness  and  loveliness  of  it  as  it  moved 
across  the  Mgean  and  the  windy  isles  of  Greece. 
Pure  and  awful,  in  the  semblance  of  the  blue- 
eyed  Athena,  it  was  the  air  which  passed  among 
his  Greek  hosts  at  eventide,  or  went  stirringly 
among  the  serried  ranks,  reviving  with  a  touch 
the  old  spirit  in  them;  or  in  the  tent  of  Achilles 
took  him  by  the  yellow  hair,  and  directed  him, 
a  spirit  and  a  presence. 

Again  and  again  throughout  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey,  the  sensitive  and  watchful  will  note  this 
persistency  and  preoccupation,  this  recurrent 
observation  of  the  air  in  its  manifold  behaviors, 
as  of  something  dear  or  memorable,  from  the 
swirling,  snatching  Harpies  to  the  clean-breathed 
morning;  from  the  sullen  sultriness  of  Achilles' s 
wrath  —  a  stubborn  heat  that  will  not  stir  —  to 
the  swift  flight  of  windy  arrows  cleansing  the 
banquet-hall  of  Ithaca.  So  too,  that  divinity  to 
whom  he  paid  his  most  constant  homage  was 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

Athena,  goddess  of  knowledge  and  of  the  air,  who 
exquisitely  typified,  not  alone  wisdom,  but,  as 
almost  one  with  wisdom,  the  most  moving  and 
yielding  of  the  elements. 

How  well  by  these  things  have  we  come  to 
know  Homer  —  who  yet  know  not  by  seven 
chances  even  so  much  as  the  city  of  his  birth! 
The  bare  facts  of  biography  seem  poor  when  com 
pared  with  these  preferences,  these  preoccupations 
and  predilections  of  the  very  man  himself. 

So,  too,  though  we  knew  little  else  about  him, 
it  were  possible  to  take  the  full  measure  of  St. 
Francis  of  Assisi  by  his  haunting  persistent  love  of 
brotherhood.  Nothing  else  in  all  his  deeds  and 
words  is  half  so  strong.  One  even  comes  to 
believe  that  his  devotion  to  his  beloved  Lady 
Poverty  was  —  doubtless  unknown  to  himself  — 
rendered  solely  because  it  made  him  one  of  a 
larger  fraternity  and  brother  to  a  greater  number 
of  men.  The  fire  that  burned  and  seared  him 
was  his  brother,  even  as  was  the  beneficent  lumi 
nary  that  warmed  him.  From  his  triumphant 
salutation  to  his  radiant  'brother  the  sun,'  on 
down  to  the  delicate  and  gentle  admonishings  of 
his  'little  brothers'  the  birds  and  fishes,  the 
thought  of  an  unlimited  and  unfettered  frater 
nity  perpetually  dominates  his  loving  spirit. 

In  like  manner  I  have  noted  in  my  many  read 
ings  of  Matthew  Arnold  that  his  mind  seems  to 
have  responded  with  a  peculiar  sensitiveness,  and 
been  often  subject  to  the  sound  and  meaning  of 

262 


HAUNTED  LIVES 

moving  waters,  and  to  the  high  destiny  of  stars. 
It  would  seem  that  'the  unplumbed,  salt,  estrang 
ing  sea'  came  in  time  to  have  a  definite  power 
over  him  in  the  ordering  of  his  images  and  even 
in  the  determining  of  his  philosophies ;  that  rivers 
flowing  silver  under  the  sun,  or,  unguessed,  in 
subterranean  chambers,  became  to  him  interpre 
tative  of  life  itself,  and  their  course  and  channel 
and  ultimate  end  a  promise  to  his  soul.  It  is  not 
alone  in  his  poetry  that  one  finds  the  'incogniz 
able  sea,'  and  hears  so  frequently  of  its  coasts 
and  beaches  and  sands  and  watery  wastes  and 
isles ;  of  voyages  and  charts ;  the  '  swinging  waters 
and  the  clustered  pier ' ;  the  ebbing  and  flowing  of 
tides ;  and  the  still  stars :  one  comes  upon  these  in 
his  prose  not  less,  very  especially  and  memorably 
in  his  Study  of  Poetry. 

It  may  be  argued  that  these  might  be  mere 
favorite  figures  and  symbols;  but  it  is  hardly 
thinkable,  after  a  careful  study  of  them,  that  they 
are  not  rather  haunting  influences  and  impres 
sions  having  long  a  familiar  access  to  the  cham 
bers  of  his  mind,  now  taking  him  with  his  forsaken 
Merman,  - 

Down,  down,  down! 

Down  to  the  depths  of  the  sea! 

or  with  the  Neckan  beside  the  green  Baltic,  point 
ing  out  the  sounding  deeps,  and  the  starry  poles, 
and  interpreting  life's  meanings  by  them. 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

So  too,  —  to  pass  but  lightly  from  one  to  an 
other,  —  we  can  hardly  read  Chaucer  devotedly 
without  at  length  becoming  aware  how  this  poet 
seems  to  have  been  haunted  by  the  idea  of  the 
freshness  and  loveliness  of  the  day's  awaking; 
his  very  heroes  and  heroines  again  and  again  seem 
ing  to  partake  of  it,  and  to  be  like  dawn  them 
selves  upon  the  hills. 

Up  rose  the  sun  and  up  rose  Emilie. 

The  'yonge  squire'  too,  of  'twenty  yere  of 
age':- 

Embrouded  was  he,  as  it  were  a  mede 
All  full  of  fresshe  floures,  white  and  red. 
Singing  he  was,  or  floy  ting  all  the  day. 
He  was  as  fresshe  as  is  the  moneth  of  May. 

In  his  most  delicate  descriptions  one  feels  the 
presence  as  of  a  breaking  light,  and  the  birds 
seem  forever  to  sing  in  his  green  coverts. 

It  is  the  dawn  and  early  morning  of  the  year 
not  less  which  is  dear  to  him  —  and  which  he  has 
chosen,  perhaps  by  an  election  not  wholly  his 
own,  as  the  season  in  which  to  order  and  assem 
ble  his  famous  pilgrimage. 

When  that  Aprille  with  his  schowres  swoote 
The  drought  of  Marche  hath  pierced  to  the  roote 

Then  longen  folke  to  gon  on  pilgrimages. 

And  so,  out  into  the  dawn  of  the  year  they  go, 
making  an  immortal  morning  of  it. 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

IV 

Two  more  lives  suggest  themselves  as  especially 
rich   in  the  testimony  they  bring  of  haunting 
influences  which  permanently  moulded  them  - 
those  of  Keats  and  Rossetti. 

It  is  well  known  how  completely  the  early  life 
of  Rossetti  came  under  the  influence  of  the  Flor 
ence  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  how  from  the  very 
beginning  there  fell  athwart  his  life  and  across 
his  very  name  the  shadow  of  her  greatest  son.  It 
is  doubtful  whether  we  gain  as  much  knowledge 
of  him  by  a  study  of  the  modern  times  in  which 
he  lived,  as  by  turning  our  attention  to  the  his 
tory  and  ideals  of  the  Florence  of  the  time  of 
Dante  and  Lorenzo  de'  Medici. 

'  It  has  been  said,'  writes  Pater,  'that  all  the 
great  Florentines  were  preoccupied  with  death. 
Outre-tombe!  Outre-tombe!  is  the  burden  of  their 
thoughts,  from  Dante  to  Savonarola.  Even  the 
gay  and  licentious  Boccaccio  gives  a  keener  edge 
to  his  stories  by  putting  them  in  the  mouths  of  a 
party  of  people  who  had  taken  refuge  from  the 
danger  of  death  by  plague,  in  a  country  house. 
It  was  to  this  inherited  sentiment,  this  practical 
decision  that  to  be  preoccupied  with  the  thought 
of  death  was  in  itself  dignifying  and  a  note  of 
high  quality,  that  the  seriousness  of  the  great 
Florentines  of  the  fifteenth  century  was  partly 
due ;  and  it  was  reinforced  in  them  by  the  actual 
sorrows  of  their  times.' 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

A  careful  study  of  Rossetti  reveals  him  also, 
like  them,  early  and  profoundly  preoccupied  with 
death.  The  richly  lighted  chambers  of  his  mind 
are  in  their  dark  moments  visited  repeatedly  by 
its  pity  and  its  melancholy.  Space  does  not  ad 
mit  of  citing  here  the  many  evidences ;  but  if  ever 
a  mind  was  visited,  preoccupied,  and  at  last  mas 
tered  by  a  strong  idea,  a  dominant  persuasion,  the 
mind  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  was  so  haunted 
—  so  dominated  —  by  the  idea  of  death. 

When  we  turn  to  Keats's  life  and  writings,  they 
offer  examples  hardly  less  notable.  For  as  Ros 
setti  was  haunted  by  the  idea  of  death,  so  Keats 
would  seem  from  the  first  to  have  been  preoccu 
pied  by  the  idea  of  beauty.  By  his  own  memor 
able  confession  he  had  worshiped  the  spirit  of  it  in 
all  things;  he  has  not  the  slightest  feeling  of  hu 
mility,  he  says,  toward  anything  in  existence  with 
three  exceptions  only:  The  Eternal  Being,  the 
Memory  of  Great  Men,  and  the  Principle  of 
Beauty. 

There  is  further  and  ample  evidence  through 
out  his  writings  that  he  was  perpetually  possessed 
by  certain  definite  forms  of  beauty :  by  the  beauty 
of  mead  and  moon,  the  wash  of  waters  at  their 
priestly  task,  the  splendor  of  the  night's  starred 
face;  but  very  especially  and  more  often,  it  would 
seem,  was  he  haunted  by  that  most  intimate  and 
tangible  of  all  lovelinesses  —  the  loveliness  of 
flowers. 

There  is  constant  reference  to  them,  a  constant 

266 


HAUNTED  LIVES 

recurring  delight  in  them.  Their  influence  again 
and  again  visited  him  and  pervaded  his  most  deli 
cate  observations.  The  memory  of  flowers  again 
and  again  laid  a  detaining  hand  upon  him,  and 
must  have  ministered  to  him  unrecorded  in  how 
many  a  night  hour,  mindful,  reminiscential,  with 
what  gentle  ministerings! 

They  bloom  in  his  lines  everywhere,  familiar  as 
the  name  of  the  beloved  on  the  lips.  It  will  be 
recalled  that  they  stand  among  those  things  of 
beauty  which  he  names  with  so  much  devotion  as 
'joys  forever';  'daffodils,  with  the  green  world 
they  live  in '  shedding  an  ethereal  sunlight  across 
the  more  sombre  beauty  of  'the  dooms  we  have 
imagined  for  the  mighty  dead/ 

So,  too,  'hushed  cool  rooted  flowers,  fragrant- 
eyed,'  touch  his  memory  with  an  ever-freshening 
sensibility.  The  greatest  pleasure  he  has  experi 
enced  in  life,  he  tells  us,  is  in  watching  the  growth 
of  flowers;  and  to  him  —  as  Hazlitt  recalls  — 
Hebrew  poetry  was  faulty  because  it  made  so  lit 
tle  mention  of  them;  and  for  the  converse  reason, 
it  would  seem  likely,  Chaucer  and  Spenser  were 
forever  his  delight. 

What  he  specially  longs  for  now,  he  writes,  - 
he  has  been  ill,  and  is  within  a  year  of  his  death,  - 
is  'the  simple  flowers  of  Spring.' 

In  the  same  letter  we  get  a  glimpse  of  certain 
early  personal  associations  not  fully  followed, 
which  would  seem  to  lend  an  added  loveliness  to 

267 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

flowers  which  he  had  always  found  in  themselves 
so  lovely. 

'How  astonishingly/  he  writes,  '.  .  .does  the 
chance  of  leaving  the  world  impress  a  sense  of 
its  natural  beauties  upon  us!  Like  poor  Falstaff, 
though  I  do  not  "  babble,"  I  think  of  green  fields; 
I  muse  with  the  greatest  affection  on  every  flower 
I  have  known  from  my  infancy  —  their  shapes 
and  colors  are  as  new  to  me  as  if  I  had  just  crea 
ted  them  with  a  superhuman  fancy.  It  is  because 
they  are  connected  with  the  most  thoughtless  and 
happiest  moments  of  our  lives.  I  have  seen  for 
eign  flowers  in  hothouses,  of  the  most  beautiful 
nature,  but  I  do  not  care  a  straw  for  them.  The 
simple  flowers  of  our  Spring  are  what  I  want  to 
see  again ! ' 

He  did  see  them  once  again,  and  then  no  more. 

In  the  account  of  his  drive  to  Rome,  he  who 
reads  sympathetically  must  enjoy  most,  it  seems 
to  me,  as  doubtless  Keats  did,  the  autumn  flow 
ers  which  Severn  gathered  for  him  by  the  way 
and  put  into  his  remembering  hand. 

Lying  quiet  at  the  last,  as  Severn  tells  us,  with 
his  hand  clasped  on  the  white  carnelian  Fanny 
Brawne  had  given  him,  when  all  other  presences 
seemed  to  have  departed  from  him,  —  Love  and 
Ambition  having  for  the  last  time  visited  him,  - 
and  when  life  itself,  with  her  hand  already  on  the 
latch,  stood  ready  to  depart,  there  lingered  yet 
awhile  beside  him  that  old  sense  of  loveliness  that 
had  so  often,  even  from  earliest  infancy,  visited 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

and  haunted  his  spirit  —  the  loveliness  and  friend 
liness  of  flowers.  Already,  in  some  vision  of  his 
spirit,  he  was  laid  down  in  their  green  world  he 
knew  so  well  and  loved.  'I  feel,'  he  said,  'the 
flowers  growing  over  me/ 


The  observations  I  have  suggested  are  here 
touched  on  but  lightly,  and  in  passing.  I  have 
made  no  profound  study  of  them,  or  of  the  infi 
nitely  subtle  psychology  which,  without  doubt,  un 
derlies  such  hauntings  of  the  spirit.  I  have  but 
known  these  men  from  childhood  and  from  early 
youth ;  have  watched  with  them  in  many  watch- 
ings.  If  there  be  one  boast  left  me  when  I  also 
shall  go  down  into  the  darkness  to  which  they 
have  so  long  lent  splendor,  it  may  well  be  that 
these  I  have  loved  and  have  cherished  with  a 
whole  heart,  and  would  have  served  them  if  I 
could,  than  Horatio  not  less  eager:  'Here,  sweet 
lord,  at  your  service.' 

But  be  all  that  as  it  may,  I  am  yet  persuaded 
that  it  is  by  some  such  means  as  I  have  here 
touched  on  that  all  biography  of  the  better  sort 
must  in  time  be  written.  Turn  where  we  will 
among  the  great,  we  find  facts  of  date  and  birth 
and  schooling  and  death  and  all  outward  cir 
cumstance  to  have  been  the  lesser  factors.  All 
these  Time  at  last  —  the  only  lastingly  consider 
able  biographer  —  rejects  and  throws  away.  That 
which  Time  retains  as  precious  and  imperishable 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

is  rather  some  fine  essence  of  the  spirit,  some  es 
sential  personality  built  up  and  moulded  by 
preferences,  predilections,  and  prepossessions  of  a 
most  highly  spiritual  order.  The  loves,  the  de 
sires,  the  dear  delights  of  men;  the  returning 
dreams,  the  recurrent  longings  that  will  not  be 
gainsaid;  the  dead  and  long-lost  dreamings  that 
revisit  the  glimpses  of  our  moon  —  these  are  in 
deed  the  spirits  of  us,  and  our  immortalities. 

Nor  is  it  only  as  aids  to  a  more  just  analysis  of 
the  great  that  these  infinitely  subtle  influences 
may  be  considered.  Plus  on  connait  de  langues 
plus  on  est  de  personnes.  If  the  knowledge  of  an 
other  language  gives  one  another  life,  as  it  were, 
—  makes  of  one  yet  another  person,  —  what  may 
not  be  said  to  be  added  unto  us  by  the  knowledge 
—  not  the  mere  speculation,  but  the  intimate 
knowledge  —  of  another  soul,  and  that  soul  one 
of  the  great  ones  of  the  earth? 

This  can  be  had  only  by  an  intimate  compan 
ionship,  not  with  the  mere  flagrant  facts,  but  with 
the  spiritual  visitings,  the  dear  desires  and  pre 
dilections,  which  haunt  all  rich  lives  significantly, 
perpetually,  even  as  they  haunt  life  itself. 

For  life  is  but  an  infinitely  ancient  abode, 
haunted  by  recurring  presences  surpassingly  spir 
itual  ;  as  he  knows  who  has  seen  death  pass  in 
and  out  of  the  ancient  chambers  in  the  night 
watches,  or  who  has  heard  the  autumn  rains  how 
reminiscent  in  patient  woodlands,  or  who  has 
been  aware  of  lovely  springs  long-gone  keeping 

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HAUNTED  LIVES 

tryst  at  certain  seasons  with  the  evening  star  in 
the  twilight,  or  has  felt  them  stealing  back,  ghostly 
and  exquisite,  when  the  April  crescent  hangs 
thoughtful  and  remote  above  dark  apple-boughs. 

In  life  as  in  lives,  the  presences  move  dark  and 
dread  or  shining  and  lovely;  and  in  the  lives  of 
the  great  as  in  life  itself  the  shining  and  lovely 
would  seem  to  be  the  more  constant  visitants. 
It  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that,  though  Banquo 
knocks  his  fearful  summons,  and  the  murdered 
Dane  speaks  with  hollow  mouthings,  yet  drifting 
forms  dance  no  less  gayly  and  delicately  on  mid 
summer  nights  in  woodsy  hollows  by  the  moon. 

It  is  noteworthy  and  remarkable  that  even  those 
among  the  great  whose  lives  have  been  sombre 
with  tragedy  have  been  visited — indeed  they  of  ten 
more  than  others  —  by  recurring  influences  of  a 
most  haunting  beauty,  like  Beethoven,  who  with 
ears  dull  yet  heard  high  symphonies,  and  Milton, 
who  with  sight  closed  to  all  outward  loveliness 
saw  yet  in  the  darkened  chambers  a  vision  as  of 
squadrons  of  bright-harnessed  angels  ranged  in 
order  serviceable,  and  knew  the  pastures  and  the 
silent  woods  to  be  full  of  sweet  voices  and  light 
steps: — 

Oh,  friend,  I  hear  the  tread  of  nimble  feet, 
Hasting  this  way! 

It  is  of  all  such  haunting  and  recurrent  pres 
ences,  be  they  dread  or  lovely,  that  he  who  most 
knows  life  is  most  aware,  and  that  he  who  would 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

know  the  lives  of  great  men  must  be  most  sen 
sitively  observant.  These  are  the  things  that 
must  be  watched  for  faithfully  and  with  a  whole 
heart  and  a  single  devotion:  *  Here,  sweet  lord,  at 
your  service!'  Leaving  all  prejudice  or  interest 
of  our  own,  it  is  for  us,  in  studying  the  lives  of 
great  men,  to  make  their  affair  ours  as  wholly  as 
may  be ;  and  to  forget  ourselves  in  a  knowledge  so 
much  more  dearly  to  be  desired. 

And  by  no  means,  I  believe,  may  this  be  done 
so  surely  as  by  a  patient  study  of  those  high  elec 
tions,  those  persistent  hauntings  of  mind  and 
spirit  which  have  influenced  and,  it  may  be,  in  so 
large  a  measure  directed  the  lives  of  all  great 
men ;  giving  their  mind  its  bent,  their  personality 
its  leanings;  often  guiding,  it  must  be,  their  mo 
tives,  and  suggesting  their  high  behaviors ;  laying 
upon  them,  as  the  ghost  upon  Hamlet,  purposes 
and  duties  thence  never  to  be  avoided,  inevitably 
to  be  discharged ;  lending  to  their  speech  its  lovely 
and  broidered  figures,  or  to  the  work  of  the  hand 
its  so  memorable  distinctions,  and  to  all  their 
activities  that  which  we  call  *  characteristic '  — 
something  particularly  and  peculiarly  their  own; 
some  chosen  and  essential  and  precious  manner 
of  expression  which,  mortal  though  they  be,  lives 
on,  surviving  them ;  and  which  is  not  to  be  found 
elsewhere  in  its  kind  or  measure  throughout  all  the 
rich  and  inexhaustible  ages. 


The  Acropolis  and  Golgotha 

By  Anne  C.  E.  Allinson 

THE  following  letters  contain  a  true  record  of  a 
mind's  journey. 

ATHENS,  May  i,  1914. 
MY  DEAR  FRIEND  :  — 

We  drove  in  from  Eleusis  this  afternoon,  once 
more  breathlessly  watching  the  Acropolis  offer  its 
white  and  golden  marbles  to  adornment  by  the 
setting  sun.  Our  Greek  winter  is  drawing  to  an 
end  and  this  was  our  good-bye  visit  to  the  Mys 
teries.  Howclearand  lucid  the  beautyof  the  place 
seemed  to-day,  from  the  brightness  of  the  sea  and 
the  firm  modeling  of  the  mountains  to  the  bloom 
of  the  placated  earth !  Demeter  and  Persephone 
were  evidently  together  in  safety,  the  mystery  of 
the  unseen  forgotten  in  the  palpable  joy  of  life 
restored. 

On  our  way  back  we  stopped,  of  course,  at  the 
Convent  of  Daphne,  to  make  ourselves  tea  in  the 
sunlit  courtyard,  and  to  take  one  more  look  at  the 
Byzantine  mosaics.  I  confess  that  this  time  they 
seemed  to  me  quaint  bits  of  the  wreckage  of  me- 
diaevalism  cast  upon  the  shore  of  Hellenism.  If 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

the  mediaeval  part  of  Christianity  is  as  inextri 
cable  as  you  say  it  is,  then  I  will  grant  you  that 
'Christian  thought*  is  an  outworn  system  com 
pared  with  the  immortal  mind  of  Greece.  As  we 
crossed  the  bridge  over  the  Cephisus,  the  Parthe 
non,  which  is  far  more  mutilated  than  the  little 
convent,  once  more  sent  abroad  from  broken 
colonnades  and  crumbling  pediments  the  impres 
sion  that  some  perennial  spirit  and  undying  vital 
ity  had,  indeed,  as  Plutarch  once  suggested,  min 
gled  in  its  very  composition.  The  Shrine  of  Wis 
dom  seemed  to  take  up  and  weld  together  all  the 
mysticism  and  all  the  rationalism  of  the  world. 

Was  it  really  ten  years  ago  that  I  wrote  to  you 
after  such  another  journey  along  the  Sacred  Way? 
And  ten  more  still  since  I  last  saw  you  at  the  little 
station  of  Eleusis  ?  You  were  going  back  to  Patras 
to  take  ship  for  Italy,  and  we  —  and  those  others 
-  had  ended  an  afternoon  spent  among  the  ruins 
by  speculating  on 

those  great  nights  of  Demeter, 
Mystical,  holy. 

I  remember  how  sure  you  were  that  the  wilder 
ideas  in  the  Mysteries,  which  allowed  for  the  re 
deeming  death  of  gods  and  over-stated  immortal 
ity,  were  but  vagrants  in  the  ordered  area  of 
Greek  reason  and  sanity.  Somebody  older  and 
wiser  than  I  began  to  appeal  to  Plato  on  behalf  of 
Greek  transcendentalism,  but  you  retorted  that 
he  was  only  the  most  disorderly  vagabond  of  them 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

all.  Then  your  train  clattered  into  the  toy  sta 
tion,  and  you  held  my  hand  for  a  moment  and  said 
with  a  kind  smile,  lAu  revoir,  petite  savante.icibas.1 

But  we  never  have  seen  each  other  again  and 
probably  never  shall.  Only  an  odd  accident,  you 
know,  led  to  the  annual  letters  which  have  spun 
the  leisurely  web  of  intimacy  between  two  travel 
ers  so  disparate  in  age  and  in  nationality.  You 
said  that  the  differences  in  our  experience,  speech 
and  traditions  were  lost  in  our  common  pilgrim 
age  to  Greece.  My  youth  reminded  you  of  the 
youth  of  Hellas,  your  age  embodied  for  me  her 
store  of  wisdom. 

It  is  your  book  which  has  set  me  on  the  trail  of 
these  old  memories.  For  when  we  began  our  let 
ters  you  said  that,  since  we  knew  little  of  each 
other's  objective  lives,  we  should  have  to  concern 
ourselves  with  inner  impressions;  and  now  your 
printed  opinions  open  up  the  question  how  the 
years  have  treated  us  in  this  matter  of  subjective 
experience.  For  one  thing,  automatically  they 
have  made  me  your  equal.  When  we  met,  you, 
at  forty-five,  had  experienced  middle  age.  At 
sixty-five  you  are  but  confirming  its  revelation. 
You  have  yet  to  come  to  the  fresh  experience  of 
old  age.  So  that  now,  when  I  am  forty- five,  I  may 
for  a  time  talk  with  you  eye  to  eye. 

Your  twenty  years,  unless  you  have  misled  me, 
have  held  no  transforming  experiences.  Joys 
have  but  grown  more  dear  and  familiar.  Sorrows, 
of  a  shattering  kind,  have  let  you  alone.  Your 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

work  prospers,  your  fame  is  assured,  your  children 
have  grown  up  to  be  well  in  body  and  mind.  All 
your  fruit  is  ripening  in  the  tranquil  sunshine.  My 
years,  on  the  other  hand,  sweeping  me  out  of  the 
twenties  into  the  forties,  have  been  packed  with 
fresh  happenings  to  heart  and  head  and  will.  Dis 
aster  has  been  left  out  of  the  brew,  but  almost 
everything  else  I  have  tasted.  Perhaps  this  dif 
ference  between  us  --  unless  it  is  one  of  sex  — 
explains  why  you,  in  the  books  you  have  written 
lately,  deal  with  philosophies  and  religions  as  if 
they  sprang,  Athena-like,  out  of  the  intellect, 
while  to  me  they  seem  the  issue  of  a  normal  union : 
if  they  are  begotten  of  thought  they  are  brought 
forth  in  anguish  by  experience. 

In  this  last  book  you  are  interested  in  Hellenism 
and  Christianity  as  forms  —  or  attributes  —  of 
'civilization.'  I  cannot  forget  that  each  of  them 
means  the  way  in  which  men  and  women  have 
managed  and  are  managing  their  diurnal  round. 
You  remember,  don't  you,  the  delightful  story  of 
Plato  lecturing  one  day  in  the  Academy  on  the 
Absolute  Good,  and  his  audience  drifting  away 
from  him  —  except  one  man  who  was  Aristotle? 
I  have  often  wondered  about  the  different  things 
the  other  men  did  that  day  after  they  had  run 
away  from  the  Idea !  At  any  rate  the  complex  was 
as  ' Hellenic'  as  the  conversation  of  the  philoso 
phers. 

And  when  one  turns  to  Christianity,  —  why, 
the  very  philosopher  who  first  intellectualized  a 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

Way  and  a  Life  had  himself  been  born  anew  of  the 
intensely  personal  experience  of  sin  and  repent 
ance.  Do  you  know  Frederic  Myers's  Saint  Paul? 
—  ah!  there  was  a  'Greek  scholar'  who  under 
stood  a  Christian !  - 

So  shall  all  speech  of  now  and  of  to-morrow, 
All  he  hath  shown  me  or  shall  show  me  yet, 

Spring  from  an  infinite  and  tender  sorrow, 
Burst  from  a  burning  passion  of  regret. 

You,  reading  history,  would  be  willing  to  obliter 
ate  Christianity  and  restore  Hellenism  as  a  uni 
versal  ideal.  I  would  rather  see  them  united  in 
each  separate  life. 

Before  I  explain  what  I  mean  by  this  I  must 
beguile  you  by  some  agreement  with  you  in  your 
criticism  of  'cardinal'  Christian  doctrines!  You 
are  right,  I  think,  in  objecting  to  the  emphasis  laid 
by  the  church  upon  a  future  life.  But  you  seem  to 
me  unnecessarily  disturbed  by  a  theory.  Chris 
tians,  like  the  followers  of  many  other  faiths,  do 
'believe'  in  immortality.  In  fact,  I  suspect  that 
only  specifically  intellectual  people  actually  dis 
believe  in  it  —  and,  with  all  respect  to  yourself, 
I  must  add  that  the  opinion  of  intellectualists  on 
the  destiny  of  the  spirit  fails  to  hold  my  attention ! 
The  authority  of  the  spiritually  gifted  —  includ 
ing  both  Socrates  and  St.  Francis  —  is  overwhelm 
ingly  on  the  side  of  the  soul  being  immortal.  But 
does  that  make  any  more  difference  in  the  life  of 
the  flesh  to-day  than  in  the  time  of  Alcibiades? 
Mediaeval  Christians  certainly  went  mad  over 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

heaven  and  hell ;  but  who  now  neglects  Demeter's 
green  earth  for  apocalyptic  visions?  You  are  de 
pressed  by  a  shadow  cast  from  the  printed  page. 
Stop  reading  and  look  about  at  your  friends! 
They  are  not  too  startled  by  the  white  radiance  of 
eternity  to  install  the  latest  electric  lights! 

As  to  your  horror  over  the  Christian  'adoration 
of  suffering,'  that  seems  to  me  better  founded  in 
view  of  the  historic  and  continued  insistence  upon 
the  cross  as  a  symbol.  I  agree  with  you.  I  can 
scarcely  express  the  revulsion  which  I  feel  in  pic 
ture  galleries  before  the  endless  succession  of 
crucifixions  and  tortured  saints.  Until  we  conquer 
disease  or  discard  violence  there  will  be  physical 
suffering  in  the  world.  But  it  is  a  thing  to  fight 
against,  not  to  worship.  For  man  to  have  painted 
and  carved  as  beautiful  a  racked  body  seems  to  me 
an  insult  to  the  God  who  made  straight  limbs  and 
fair  flesh,  and  a  strange  betrayal  of  the  Galilean 
who  wished  to  heal  the  suffering  of  others  as  long 
as  he  lived,  and  only  accepted  it  for  himself  as  an 
incidental  necessity  at  the  end.  He  had  no  medi 
aeval  disregard  for  the  flesh.  The  agony  in  Geth- 
semane  consisted  in  facing  the  obligation  to  offer 
up  a  body  and  a  life  which  were  very  precious  to 
him.  The  glory  consisted  in  the  sacrifice,  not  in 
the  temporary  torture  to  which  it  led.  Love,  not 
suffering,  is  the  core  of  Christianity.  A  truer  sym 
bol  than  the  defeated  body  on  the  cross  would  be 
the  same  body  strong  and  beneficent  among  men. 

Here  the  Periclean  sculptor  would  have  done 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

better  for  us  than  the  mediaeval  painter.  But  only 
here.  Neither  he  nor  any  of  his  contemporaries 
could  have  understood  Gethsemane.  Their  great 
ness  consisted  in  their  selection,  out  of  the  prodi 
gal  abundance  which  lies  before  man,  of  noble  pos 
sessions.  They  were  far  superior  to  the  Puritans 
in  that  they  retained  art  with  morals,  and  they 
were  equally  superior  to  the  modern  Romanticists 
in  that  they  picked  and  chose  only  such  beauty 
as  they  believed  could  be  amalgamated  with  char 
acter.  Their  inferiority  to  the  Christians  lay  in 
their  failure  to  hold  their  treasures  in  trust  for 
humanity. 

And  now  I  come  back  to  my  argument  against 
you.  We  who  boast  of  being  the  'heirs  of  the  ages' 
need  not  be  as  limited  as  you  imply.  The  modern 
man  or  woman  can  combine  the  Greek  ideal  of 
self-development  with  the  Christian  ideal  of  self- 
dedication.  In  reality,  I  am  not  arguing,  but 
asserting.  I  know  that  this  union  is  possible  by 
the  only  evidence  which  is  admissible  —  the  evi 
dence  of  a  life.  I  have  known  for  many  years  one 
person  who  unites  in  a  normal  experience  your 
grandiose  abstractions  of  Christianity  and  Hel 
lenism.  This  person  is  my  mother.  Do  not  take 
her  sex  as  an  obstacle.  She  is  a  better  example 
than  some  famous  man  might  be,  because  her 
character  is  not  obscured  by  public  achievement. 
She  has  none  of  the  limitations  of  a  profession  or 
career,  or  of  some  unique  strain  of  genius.  What 
she  is  creates  careers  or  feeds  genius.  She  is  the 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

most  complete  human  being  I  have  ever  known, 
and  yet  her  wholeness  is  a  presage  of  what  we  all 
might  become.  It  is  to  a  life  like  this  that  you 
ought  to  go  when  you  take  stock  of  the  philoso 
phies  of  the  world! 

My  mother's  external  fortune,  judged  by  Greek 
standards,  is  good  —  too  good,  of  course,  for  a 
woman.  She  has  received  from  fate  much  that 
would  have  satisfied  a  Greek  man :  the  conscious 
ness  of  citizenship  in  a  proud  and  prospering 
nation;  health,  long  life,  an  active  mind,  and 
enough  money  to  live  tastefully;  and,  finally,  sat 
isfactory  children  (if  I  may  be  permitted  to  say 
this)  and  the  approval  of  her  fellow  citizens.  The 
Greek  estimate  of  the  importance  of  such  ap 
proval  springs,  I  suppose,  from  intense  feeling  for 
the  communal  life.  No  Greek  man  could  be  men 
tally  less  confined  to  the  walls  of  a  house  than  is 
my  mother,  and  an  Athenian  voter  could  scarcely 
have  served  his  polls  more  completely  than  she 
serves  our  little  town.  The  only  difference  here 
between  her  and  a  Periclean  citizen  is  that  she  is 
perplexed  and  shy  rather  than  expectant  and 
gratified  when  evidences  of  public  approval  are 
forced  upon  her. 

In  natural  endowment,  also,  my  mother  is  sin 
gularly  Greek,  because  she  possesses  diverse  qual 
ities  harmoniously  welded  into  one  whole.  We  are 
conscious  of  no  contradictions  in  her,  and  yet  she 
is  both  sane  and  imaginative,  sensitive  and  practi 
cal,  dominating  and  gentle. 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

Finally,  in  her  conscious  activities  she  is  Greek. 
There  is,  for  example,  her  moral  insistence  upon 
form  and  beauty.  If  you  could  live  in  her  house 
for  a  day  you  would  see  Hellenism  as  a  diurnal 
practice.  Her  taste  is  flawless ;  everything  she 
touches  turns  to  beauty  and  to  a  tranquillizing 
order  and  simplicity.  She  selects  a  vase  or  a  bak 
ing  dish  with  the  aesthetic  fastidiousness  which 
beset  the  artists  and  artisans  of  Athens. 

And,  furthermore,  she  is  Greek  in  her  perennial 
enthusiasm  for  fresh  knowledge.  Her  enjoyment 
of  life  seems  to  me  intense  because  she  is  never 
tired  of  exploring  the  world  through  every  kind  of 
human  achievement.  She  has  the  curiosity  of  the 
Hellenic  mind.  The  Athenian  men  who  were  like 
her  made  it  worth  while  for  other  men  to  be  scien 
tists  and  philosophers  and  poets. 

And  yet  my  mother  is  a  Christian.  You  see 
what  I  believe  she  has  and  is.  Well,  all  of  this  she 
takes  in  her  two  hands  and  offers  daily.  Of  course, 
she  believes  in  immortality,  but  she  never  talks 
about  the  future  life,  and  I  have  told  you  of  her 
vigorous  interest  in  this  one.  Of  course,  too,  she 
has  known  many  sorrows  —  who  has  not  at  sev 
enty? —  but  she  has  consistently  concealed  pain 
and  suffering  instead  of  enthroning  them.  Her 
Christianity  is  compounded  of  Love.  As  it 
streams  out  from  her  it  is  the  creative,  regenerat 
ing  passion  for  humanity  which  transcended  the 
reasoned  good-will  of  the  pagan  philosophers  and 
transcends  the  materialistic  serviceableness  of  the 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

modern  humanitarians.  In  the  noblest  pagan  lit 
erature  there  is  no  emotion  at  all  resembling  that 
which  suffuses  the  New  Testament.  In  this  emo 
tion  my  mother  lives  and  moves  and  has  her  being. 
I  snap  my  fingers  at  Nietzscheism  when  I  real 
ize  that  she  is  the  strongest  personality  in  my  little 
world.  She  dies  daily  for  us,  but  we  live  her  way ! 
No  superman  could  impose  his  will  more  effec 
tively  than  this  Christian  in  whom  power  and  sac 
rifice  are  one.  God  is  love.  If  all  history  tried 
to  make  me  a  skeptic  my  mother's  nature  would 
keep  me  a  believer. 

Whoso  hath  felt  the  spirit  of  the  Highest 
Cannot  confound  nor  doubt  him  nor  deny; 

Yea  with  one  voice,  O  world,  tho'  thou  deniest, 
Stand  thou  on  that  side,  for  on  this  am  I. 

I  have  spoken  of  my  mother's  health  and 
energy.  Just  lately  these  have  flagged  a  little, 
and  I  came  away  this  time  with  some  misgivings, 
and  only  for  my  husband's  sake.  But  her  letters 
have  quite  reassured  me.  Lately  she  wrote,  'I 
am  daily  thankful  that  nothing  prevented  you 
from  spending  this  winter  on  the  Acropolis.  In 
thinking  of  you  I  can't  manage  to  dislodge  you 
from  the  hill  long  enough  to  eat  and  sleep.* 

She  knows  me !  We  have  traveled  all  over  the 
country  this  year,  but  always  come  back  to 
Athens  and  the  Attic  plain  as  to  the  heart  of 
Greece.  We  went  to  Egypt  in  midwinter,  and  on 
our  return  hurried  almost  from  the  ship  to  the 
Parthenon.  It  had  snowed  lightly  and  the  whit- 

282 


THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

ened  summits  of  Pentelicon  and  Hymettus  and 
Parnes  lay  in  sharp  relief  under  the  brilliant  sky. 
A  Greek  friend  of  mine,  looking  at  these  fleshless 
mountains,  said  proudly,  'It  is  not  every  one  who 
dares  show  her  bones.'  Attica  needs  no  soften 
ing  mist,  no  glamorous  moonlight,  no  romantic 
obscuration.  Her  beauty  is  born  of  light  and  her 
teaching  is  light.  In  Egypt  man  was  mocked  by 
the  desert.  Small  wonder  the  Christian  saints 
hid  themselves  there  to  punish  their  poor  bodies ! 
Here  man  seeks  the  sun  and  stands  erect  in  his 
dignity.  Medisevalism,  I  grant  you,  must  make 
way  for  this  immortal  humanism.  The  'mystery 
of  suffering'  is  an  invention  of  distorted  minds. 
Stripped  of  disguise,  suffering  is  merely  an  evil  to 
be  done  away  with  by  Love.  This,  I  take  it,  is 
the  message  of  the  Acropolis  to  the  Christian. 

We  are  leaving  next  week  for  a  month  in 
London,  and  then  home.  May  Fortune  multiply 
your  royalties  and  Athena  inspire  another  book ! 

Faithfully  yours. 

P.S.  The  American  mail  is  just  in.  A  letter 
from  a  neighbor  in  my  native  town  says  that 
no  one  in  my  mother's  house  will  disobey  her 
order  that  I  am  not  to  be  sent  for,  but  that  I  am 
greatly  needed.  It  is  possible  that  she  will  not 
live  until  I  can  reach  her.  We  shall  sail  for  New 
York  day  after  to-morrow.  My  world  begins  to 
crumble. 


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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

PINELANDS,  MAINE,  April  20,  1915. 
MY  DEAR  FRIEND  :- 

As  I  begin  this  letter  there  flashes  into  my  mind 
the  last  sentence  which  I  wrote  to  you  a  year  ago 
from  Greece  —  that  my  little  world  was  crumbling. 
And  since  then  how  your  own  world  has  been 
shattered,  and  the  universe  almost  set  reeling  in 
its  course !  I  remember  how  I  talked  on  in  that 
letter  about  areas  of  experience,  blocking  you  off 
into  twenty-year  periods!  I  thought  then  that 
only  the  years  would  carry  us  into  new  seas.  But 
in  twelve  months  you  have  been  swept  from  the 
moorings  of  your  middle  life.  France  is  again 
facing  the  enemy  as  she  did  in  your  boyhood,  but 
now  your  sons  are  risking  lives  more  precious  than 
your  own.  Your  wife  and  daughters  are  nursing 
the  wounded  and  the  stricken.  You,  'too  old  to 
fight/ — and  so  in  a  flash  set  forward  into  old  age, 
—  are  nevertheless  finding  your  pen  tipped  with 
passion  instead  of  with  philosophy.  One  of  your 
lyrics  is  being  sung  in  the  trenches.  You  are  no 
longer  an  intellectualist,  but  a  voice  of  France. 
And  thousands  upon  thousands  of  other  men  and 
women  are  experiencing  a  similar  metamorphosis. 
Who  knows  what  new  philosophies  and  religions 
will  be  born? 

I  have  been  wondering  whether  you  would  still 
call  Plato  an  intruder  and  vagabond  in  Hellenism. 
Greek  thought  changed  under  the  shock  to  Athe 
nian  civilization  caused  by  thePeloponnesianWar. 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

By  this  abstraction  do  we  mean  anything  else 
than  that  Plato  and  other  men  had  brought  home 
to  them  the  transitoriness  of  prosperity,  the  help 
lessness  of  morals,  learning,  and  art  before  a  re 
crudescence  of  primitive  violence,  and  the  limita 
tions  of  humanism?  The  material  stage  in  those 
days  was  small, —  little  states  wage  a  little  war, — 
but  in  view  of  her  spiritual  importance  the  suffer 
ing  of  Athens  was  a  world -experience  of  the  first 
magnitude.  Possibly  Plato  seems  to  you  now  less 
a  vagrant  than  a  pilot. 

For  certainly  our  'new  religion,'  if  we  bring  one 
to  birth,  cannot  be  composed  of  truths  wholly 
unknown  before.  Some  of  our  new  creative 
energy  will  go  into  stripping  the  veil  from  the  face 
of  that  Reality  which  men  at  one  time  and  another 
have  beheld.  I  find  it  easy  to  believe  this  because 
through  an  in  tensive  personal  experience  of  my  own 
I  have  been  brought  to  perceive  a  truth  which  is 
two  thousand  years  old.  Last  year  I  argued  about 
Christianity,  choosing  this  part,  discarding  that. 
This  year  I  have  knelt  and  touched  the  hem  of  the 
seamless  robe.  The  experience  would  be  too  inti 
mate  and  sacred  to  reveal  were  it  not  bound  up 
with  your  own.  Let  me  tell  you  about  it.  It  is 
the  only  way  in  which  I  can  talk  with  you  about 
your  sons  who  are  facing  death  and  suffering. 

I  wrote  you  that  I  was  called  home  from  Athens 
by  my  mother's  illness.  She  died  last  month. 
During  the  intervening  months  revelation  after 
revelation  came  to  me.  My  mother  had  grown 

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worse  rapidly  and  at  first  I  was  shocked  to  my 
innermost  heart  by  the  change  in  her.  All  her 
strength  seemed  turned  to  weakness.  Her  rich  and 
varied  life  had  shrunk  to  the  hushed  quiet  of  a 
sick-room.  Her  tranquil  face  had  become  hag 
gard.  Her  eager  intellect  had  slipped  away  from 
her.  There  was  nothing  left  of  the  beautiful  Hel 
lenism  of  her  life.  A  Periclean  Greek  would  now 
have  seen  in  her  only  an  illustration  of  the  shadow 
lurking  within  the  sunshine,  the  tragedy  of  bodily 
weakness  and  old  age  and  death. 

And  since  she  no  longer  had  riches  to  offer,  what 
had  become  of  her  Christianity?  The  question 
could  not  frame  itself,  for  I  was  caught  and  lifted 
out  of  my  despair  by  the  swift  impression  that 
about  my  frail  mother  there  glowed  a  radiance 
which  outshone  the  sunlight  of  her  active  years. 
The  dayspring  from  on  high  had  but  put  to  flight 
the  lesser  stars.  Every  one  who  could  see  her 
was  conscious  of  it.  One  of  her  nurses  said  to 
me,  'She  is  so  different  from  the  weak  people  I've 
seen  before.  I  feel  so  warm,  somehow,  when 
I'm  with  her.' 

A  further  revelation  was  that  my  mother  was 
done  with  life  and  with  us.  She  was  exquisite  in 
her  treatment  of  us,  managing  in  receiving  still  to 
be  the  giver.  One  day  she  said  to  me,  unforget 
tably,  'You  are  making  pain  and  sickness  very 
beautiful/  But  that  inward  eagerness  of  hers 
which  had  led  me  to  believe  that  she  had  the 
Greek  feeling  for  this  world  was  now  turned 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

toward  a  new  and  vaster  world.  She  had  ex 
hausted  the  experiences  of  this  life  —  marriage 
and  children,  work  and  achievement,  knowledge 
and  beauty,  joy  and  sorrow.  In  seeing  this  I  saw 
too  how  far  short  they  fall  of  the  potentialities  of 
an  immortal  soul.  With  her  energy  and  imagina 
tion  she  had  drained  every  drop  out  of  them,  but 
now  she  tossed  them  aside  for  some  new  wine. 

The  only  time  she  ever  spoke  to  me  of  the  death 
which  I  was  sure  she  knew  was  drawing  close,  she 
did  it  lightly,  with  that  humor  which  was  a  part 
of  her  sanity.  The  doctors  had  just  left  her  room 
after  consulting  about  some  new  form  of  her  sick 
ness,  and  she  turned  to  me  with  a  smile  and  said, 
'Don't  repair  me  too  often !  I  shall  never  get  free 
if  I  don't  get  worse.*  But  she  told  a  friend  of  her 
own  age  that  nobody  could  imagine  how  eager  she 
was  to  be  gone.  *I  can  hardly  wait,'  she  said,  'to 
find  out  about  it  all.  The  only  thing  that  troubles 
me  is  that  the  others  will  be  sorry.'  I  am  not 
sorry.  Since  she  wanted  eternity  without  my 
grief,  she  shall  have  it. 

In  the  last  few  months  Nature  did  us  one  of  her 
not  uncommon  services.  Much  of  my  mother's 
physical  strength  came  back  to  her,  as  if  at  the 
end  the  body  was  determined  to  be  a  fit  mate  for 
the  soul  it  had  so  long  accompanied.  She  could 
move  about  once  more  in  her  little  polls.  During 
my  last  visit  at  home  I  was  enchanted  by  a  sweet 
and  bubbling  gayety  which  seemed  to  flow  from 
some  hidden  spring  of  contentment.  A  week  later 

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she  died  swiftly,  before  I  could  reach  her.  All  our 
friends  talked  to  me  of  the  light  in  her  face  during 
that  week,  and  an  old  bedridden  Irish  servant, 
telling  me  of  a  visit  from  her,  exclaimed,  'I  kept 
thinking  that  she  was  just  like  a  bride,  dressed  so 
beautifully  and  looking  so  happy.'  The  Christian 
figure  of  the  soul  and  God !  The  old  Celtic  eyes 
had  seen  the  truth.  Of  such  substance  was  my 
mother's  faith  in  a  future  life.  It  was,  indeed,  the 
evidence  of  things  unseen!  I  perceived  the  fresh 
heart  of  Christianity  in  a  belief  so  aged  that  it  had 
built  the  pyramids  centuries  before  it  set  up  the 
temples  at  Eleusis.  Never  again  shall  I  be  found 
chattering  while  the  great  trumpet  blasts  for  im 
mortality  echo  down  the  ages. 

But  before  my  mother's  death  another  veil  had 
been  lifted  for  me.  Behind  it  I  found  the  meaning 
of  the  cross.  The  experience  will  hardly  bear 
words.  It  was  very  simple,  the  issue  of  intimate 
daily  living,  but  it  transformed  one  human  mind 
as  Bible  and  church,  history  and  art  had  never 
done.  On  the  day  it  happened  to  me  I  was  open 
to  no  impressions  from  without.  The  weather  was 
severe  in  our  northern  town  whose  normal  beauty 
is  not  un-Greek  in  its  austerity  and  lucidity.  A 
stormy  east  wind  drove  dark  clouds  across  the 
sky,  and  our  firs  and  pine  trees  loomed  black  and 
forbidding.  I  turned  from  the  window  to  the  soft 
loveliness  of  my  mother's  room.  There  my  heart 
and  mind  were  closed  to  all  abstract  thought  and 
large  emotions,  for  the  nurse  was  away  and  I  was 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

absorbed  in  the  details  of  thermometer  and  med 
icines.  My  whole  being  was  centred  in  the  hope 
that  I  might  make  my  mother  comfortable  during 
those  hours.  With  inexpressible  tenderness  I  be 
gan  to  bathe  her,  doing  for  her  in  her  frailty  at  the 
end  of  life  what  she  had  so  often  done  for  me  in 
mine  at  the  beginning.  Then  it  was  that  my  eyes 
were  opened.  You  know  what  a  Greek  would 
have  seen  in  a  body  worn  with  age,  emaciated  by 
sickness,  bearing  many  marks  of  suffering.  But 
I  beheld  in  it  the  central  beauty  of  the  world.  If 
the  noblest  of  the  marble  Aphrodites  had  stood  in 
the  room  I  should  have  recoiled  from  her  in  hor 
ror.  I  knew  that  my  mother's  sickness  was  due  to 
her  prodigal  waste,  for  us,  of  her  natural  strength. 
Her  flesh  had  been  spent  for  us  —  for  me.  In  a 
sudden  supreme  moment  I  was  at  one  with  the 
disciples,  passionately  loving  the  friend  who  had 
given  his  body  to  be  broken  for  them;  at  one  with 
the  mad  Christian  iconoclasts,  shattering  heathen 
statues ;  at  one  with  the  mediaeval  artists,  paint 
ing  and  carving  the  crucified  Christ. 

Later  I  came  to  see  that  only  in  that  hour  had 
I  grasped  the  significance  of  my  mother's  life.  At 
first  I  had  thought  of  her  suffering  as  subordinate 
to  her  love,  an  incident  among  her  sacrifices.  Now 
I  know  it  to  be  a  sacramental  reality,  preexistent 
in  all  her  earlier  beneficence  and  at  the  end  the 
earnest  of  her  immortality. 

Later  still  I  realized  what  had  happened.  In 
an  obscure  individual  hour  had  been  reenacted  an 

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experience  which  once  befell  the  world.  The  an 
tique  order  was  swept  away  by  a  tidal  wave  of 
emotion,  and  in  its  place  was  left  a  new  life  and 
thought  and  art.  Mediaeval  ism,  which  had  of 
fended  me  in  history,  issued  from  the  feeling  of 
men  and  women  as  unknown  as  myself,  married  to 
the  expression  of  thinkers,  poets  and  artists.  In 
understanding,  at  last,  the  feeling,  I  came  to  under 
stand  the  way  in  which  it  was  expressed. 

When  the  Christian  world,  recovering  its  bal 
ance  by  means  of  the  Renaissance,  once  more 
accepted  the  worth  of  antiquity,  it  refused  to  sur 
render  the  new  treasure  which  it  had  gained  in  its 
temporary  recoil  from  humanism.  Popes  on  the 
throne  retained  the  symbol  which  had  comforted 
slaves  in  the  Catacombs.  The  same  cross  sur 
vived  the  Reformation  and  persists,  plastically 
and  verbally,  as  the  sign  of  modern  Christianity. 
Until  lately  this  paradox  was  as  strange,  in  its 
way,  as  that  of  a  Borgian  posing  as  Vicar  of  the 
Crucified.  Last  year  I  saw  all  kinds  of  people 
trying  to  obliterate  suffering:  the  intellectualists 
were  denying  its  efficacy,  the  humanitarians  its 
necessity,  the  Christian  Scientists  its  reality.  In 
our  various  modern  forms  of  speech  we  were  ad 
dressing  prayers  to  Hygeia,  enshrined  on  the 
Acropolis. 

Then,  with  terrible  suddenness,  the  roar  of  guns 
interrupted  us. 

Clouds  and  darkness 
Closed  upon  Camelot. 

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THE  ACROPOLIS  AND  GOLGOTHA 

Some  one  light  in  the  encircling  gloom  we  must 
have,  if  we  are  to  work  our  way  out  into  a  renewal 
of  civilization.  Are  we  to  discover  it  by  still  an 
other  paradox,  in  the  very  mystery  of  suffering 
which  we  have  been  denying?  If  one  of  your  sons 
(which  God  forbid !)  should  be  brought  home  muti 
lated,  you  would  not  choose  to  remember  him  in 
his  young  strength  and  beauty,  because  he  would 
seem  more  beautiful  to  you  stretched  upon  his 
cross.  You  would  not  rest  in  your  agony,  or  in 
your  fierce  anger  that  such  things  are  possible  in 
the  world.  You  would  pass  from  these  to  the 
conviction  that  his  suffering  for  France  made  his 
humanity  divine.  I  do  not  pretend  to  understand 
the  matter.  I  only  know  it  to  be  true.  Even  the 
Greeks  presaged  it  at  Eleusis,  but  they  forgot  it 
as  they  turned  homeward.  For  us  it  still  lies  be 
yond  reason,  but  is  beginning  to  be  clearer  than 
the  axioms  of  reason.  The  mystery  of  suffering 
is  more  lucid  than  the  fact  of  well-being. 

My  friend,  may  we  not  look  upon  this  as  the 
answer  of  Golgotha  to  the  Acropolis? 

Faithfully  yours. 


The  Baptizing  of  the  Baby 

By  Elizabeth  Taylor 

THE  Baby  arrived  in  a  howling  nor'easter.  The 
fjelds  were  white  with  driving  snow,  the  sea  was 
white  with  the  spindrift  of  gale-lashed  waves, 
when  the  little  procession  filed  into  the  parson 
age  courtyard.  There  were  a  father,  five  god 
fathers,  two  godmothers,  and  a  few  non-official 
friends.  No  baby  was  visible,  but  a  muffled 
gurgle  betrayed  her  presence.  One  of  the  god 
fathers,  a  fine  young  Viking  of  a  lad,  had  a  wo 
man's  dress-skirt  buttoned  around  his  neck  and 
hanging  down  in  front.  Within  its  warm  folds 
was  the  Baby. 

The  Baby's  age  was  but  four  weeks,  and  this 
her  first  journey  into  the  outside  world.  Custom 
has  decreed  that  a  Faroe  Island  baby  must  not 
pass  its  parents'  threshold  until  it  goes  to  the 
Pastor  to  be  received  into  the  Church,  and  so 
made  secure  from  the  Powers  of  Darkness.  Hav 
ing  once  left  its  home,  it  cannot  return  with  the 
sacred  rite  unperformed. 

Imagine,  then,  the  dismay  that  fell  upon  the 
Baby's  escorts  when  they  learned  that  the  Pastor 

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THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

had  gone  to  the  capital,  several  days  before,  on 
important  church  business.  To  Thorshavn!  Only 
seven  miles  away,  by  sea,  to  be  sure,  but,  with 
that  gale,  it  might  as  well  be  seventy.  What  to 
do  now?  The  Baby  could  not  be  taken  back  un- 
baptized.  And  there  was  the  baptismal  feast  all 
arranged:  sweet  soup,  hung  mutton,  potatoes, 
coffee,  little  cakes,  with  card-playing  in  the  after 
noon,  and  rice-porridge  and  sandwiches  in  the 
evening.  The  Baby's  mother  was  putting  the 
sweet  soup  over  the  fire  when  they  left  that  morn 
ing.  Five  miles  by  fjord  they  had  come;  then, 
as  the  gale  increased,  and  they  neared  the  open 
sea,  they  had  'set  up*  on  land,  and  trudged  the 
remaining  three  miles  through  deep  snow. 

'Oh,  well,'  sighed  the  father,  'we  may  as  well 
"take  it  with  quiet."  The  women-folk  are  too 
weary,  anyhow,  to  go  through  those  drifts  again. 
We  had  better  send  one  man  home  to  explain 
matters,  while  the  rest  of  us  visit  our  friends. 
The  storm  may  lessen  at  any  time,  so  we  can  go 
to  Thorshavn  and  bring  home  the  Pastor.' 

But  —  the  Baby  —  And  here  the  'Pastorinde' 
was  called  upon  to  advise.  Yes  the  Pastorinde 
did  know  of  a  newly-arrived  baby  in  the  village, 
and  she  doubted  not  that  its  mother  would  kindly 
permit  the  stranger-baby  to  share  and  share  alike 
with  her  own. 

I,  too,  was  'weather-fast.'  From  Thorshavn 
I  had  come,  twelve  days  before,  to  'hold  Jule1  at 
the  parsonage,  intending  to  return  two  days  after 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

Christmas.  Then  came  this  long  storm.  There 
was  no  going  to  Thorshavn  by  sea;  feut  in  a 
roundabout  way,  by  fjord  and  fjeld,  it  might  be 
done  in  a  case  of  necessity,  such  as  this  church- 
meeting  that  the  Pastor  must  attend. 

The  foreman  of  the  eight-man  boat,  however, 
flatly  refused  to  take  me.  'The  Herr  Pastor,'  he 
explained  patiently,  'has  strong  legs.  He  can 
jump  and  stand  fast  in  surf,  climb  cliffs,  and  go 
through  deep  snow.  But  it  is  no  journey  for 
women-folk  in  high  winter-time. ' 

So  I  was  left  behind  when  the  Pastor  went  to 
Thorshavn. 

One  must  start  before  daylight  these  short 
winter  days  to  enable  the  boats  to  return  before 
dark.  For  eight  days  I  had  been  living  as  much 
packed  up  as  possible,  sleeping  lightly,  waking  in 
the  blackness  of  morning  at  the  sound  of  voices 
in  the  kitchen  below.  Groping  to  the  head  of  the 
stairway,  I  could  hear  the  decision  of  the  foreman : 
'Not  possible  to-day,  Fru  Pastorinde.  There  is 
ribbingur  i  sjonum  (dangerous  sea)  outside.  '- 
And  back  I  would  creep  shivering,  sure  of  one  day 
more  in  the  parsonage. 

'What  is  the  Baby's  name  to  be?'  I  asked  one 
of  the  godfathers,  as  we  chanced  to  meet  the  next 
day.  An  embarrassed  silence  was  followed  by  an 
abrupt  change  of  subject,  and  I  felt  that  I  had 
made  a.  faux  pas.  Later,  I  was  told  that  a  baby's 
name  must  never  be  asked,  never  be  told,  before 
baptism.  I  knew,  already,  some  bits  of  baby- 

294  /- 


THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

lore.  For  instance,  if  a  child  cries  while  it  is  being 
baptized,  it  will  have  a  good  voice  and  sing  well 
at  the  ballad  dances.  The  water  must  never  be 
allowed  to  run  down  into  the  baby's  eyes,  or  it 
will  have  'second  sight.'  This  is  not  a  happy 
gift,  and  I  notice  that  the  godmother  holding  the 
child,  tilts  it  at  the  right  moment  so  that  the 
water  flows  back  over  the  forehead.  I  know,  too, 
that  the  man  who  carries  a  baby-boy  to  and  from 
the  church  goes  as  fast  as  possible,  so  that  the 
boy  will  be  strong  at  the  oar,  sure-footed  on  the 
fjelds. 

All  this,  you  observe,  for  the  boy  baby.  No 
such  trouble  is  taken  for  a  mere  girl.  But,  for 
both  alike,  there  is  this  precaution:  never  leave  a 
child  alone  before  it  is  baptized.  Until  then  it 
falls  easily  into  the  power  of  evil  spirits,  and  is  in 
danger  of  being  carried  away  by  Hulderfolk. 
These  underground  creatures  are  not  'the  little 
people,'  or  the  Brownies.  In  size  and  appear 
ance  they  resemble  human  beings.  They  have 
boats  and  go  to  the  fishery ;  they  have  cows,  sheep 
(that  are  always  gray),  dogs  (large  black  hounds 
that  often  have  a  light  on  the  end  of  their  tails) ; 
but  one  thing  the  Hulderfolk  lack  and  that  is 
souls.  If,  however,  they  can  take  away  a  Faroe 
baby  and  substitute  one  of  their  own,  and  it  is 
baptized,  then  that  child  will  have  a  soul. 

I  know  a  peasant  woman  whose  daughter  died 
«i  childbirth  not  long  ago,  leaving  her  baby  to  her 
mother's  care.  The  father  of  the  baby  was  fish- 

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ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

ing  in  Iceland,  and  the  old  woman  lived  alone  in 
her  little  cottage.  I  went  to  see  her,  and  during 
my  visit,  she  wished  to  show  me  some  articles  in 
another  part  of  the  house.  Wherever  we  went 
she  took  the  cradle  with  her.  I  understood  the 
reason  and  said  to  her,  — 

*  But,  Sanna,  living  by  yourself  as  you  do,  are 
you  not  obliged  sometimes  to  leave  the  baby 
alone?' 

1  Yes,  Fr6ken, '  she  replied  sadly,  'several  times 
I  have  had  to  leave  him  just  for  a  few  minutes. 
But  I  put  the  Psalm-book  under  his  pillow,  I 
mark  him  with  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  and  /  run 
my  best! ' 

Another  story  I  have  heard  lately  is  about  a 
Hulderchild  on  Vider6.  A  peasant  and  his  wife 
had  a  baby-boy,  a  good  happy  healthy  child, 
who  never  cried  or  made  trouble.  One  day  the 
mother  had  to  leave  him  alone  a  little  while. 
When  she  returned  she  found  the  baby  crying 
and  fretting.  Its  face  seemed  changed,  somehow, 
and  yet  she  could  not  say  that  it  was  not  their 
child.  From  that  time  it  cried  night  and  day 
until  the  parents  were  worn  out,  and  they  took 
it  to  the  Pastor  to  ask  his  advice.  Now  the  Pas 
tor  'knew  more  than  his  Paternoster,'  as  the 
saying  is;  that  is,  he  had  studied  Black  Art.  He 
examined  the  child  and  said  he  feared  it  was  a 
bytte  (changeling).  '  Now, '  said  he, '  go  home  and 
build  a  great  brewing  fire  in  the  fire-place.  In 
each  of  the  four  corners  put  a  limpet-shell  filled 

296 


THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

with  milk.  Then  hide  yourselves,  so  you  can  see 
and  hear  the  child,  but  it  will  not  know  you  are 
there.  If  it  says  or  does  anything  that  shows  it  is 
a  Hulderchild,  then  you  may  hope  to  get  your 
own  baby  back  again. ' 

The  parents  followed  carefully  the  Pastor's  in 
structions,  and,  trembling  with  anxiety,  awaited 
the  result.  As  the  fire  roared  and  crackled, 
the  child  stirred  uneasily  and  stopped  crying. 
Then  it  raised  itself  on  its  elbow  and  watched  the 
fire  and  the  four  limpet- shells  that  were  sizzling 
away  in  the  corners.  Then  they  heard  the  child 
laugh  scornfully,  and  saw  it  point  at  the  limpets. 
'  Huh ! '  it  exclaimed,  *  how  can  a  child  be  expected 
to  thrive  in  a  house  where  they  have  such  things 
for  kettles!  They  should  just  see  the  great 
kettles  —  the  great  brewing-pots  —  in  the  house 
of  my  father,  Buin!' 

The  Hulderchild  had  betrayed  itself!  That 
night  there  was  no  crying,  the  parents  slept  in 
peace  and  woke  to  find  their  own  good  happy 
baby  in  the  cradle. 

What  are  the  cradle-songs  this  Baby  will  hear 
in  the  cabin  where  she  first  saw  the  gray  light  of 
December?  Verses  from  the  old  Kingos  Psalm- 
book,  ballads  of  the  Long  Serpent  and  King  Olaf , 
of  Queen  Dagmar's  death,  the  Whale  Song, 
stories  from  the  Iceland  Sagas  and  the  Nibelun- 
-genlied.  Little  verses,  too,  Mother  Goosey  jingles ; 
one  that  is  sung  in  Norwegian  to  babies  in  all  the 
Scandinavian  lands :  — 

297 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

Row,  row  to  the  fishing  ground, 
How  many  fishes  have  you  found? 

One  for  Father, 

One  for  Mother, 

One  for  Sister, 

One  for  Brother, 
One  for  him  that  drew  the  nets, 

One  for  my  little  Baby. 

Here  is  a  little  Faroe  verse :  - 

Down  comes  the  Puffin  to  the  sea, 

With  his  head  carried  high. 
'Little  Gray-titlark,  lend  me  thy  boat?' 
1  Small  is  my  boat,  short  are  my  legs  — 

But  come  thee  on  board ' ; 
And  the  oars  rattle  in  the  oarlocks. 

When  the  Baby  grows  a  little  bigger,  she  will 
not  be  taught  that  'the  Bossy-cow  says,  "Mo-o-o," 
the  Pussy-cat  says,  '  *  Me-ow. ' '  No,  she  will  learn 
what  the  birds  say :  — 

The  Puffin  says,  '  Ur-r!     UR-R!     UR-R!' 

The  Raven  says, '  Kronk!   KRONK!   KRONKI' 

The  Crow  says,  'Krai    KRA!    KRA!' 

The  Eider-duck  says,  'Ah-ool   AII-OOI   AH-00!' 

The  Wheatear  says,  'Tck!  TCK!  TCK!  None  so  pretty  as  I!' 

and  so  on  through  a  long  list  of  the  birds  of  f  jeld 
and  sea. 

Summer  and  winter  the  birds  will  be  the  Baby's 
neighbors.  From  her  father's  cabin  she  can  hear 
the  eider-ducks  cooing  softly  as  they  rise  and  fall 
just  beyond  the  white  crest  of  the  breakers. 
Starlings  bubble  and  chortle  on  the  grassy  house- 

298 


THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

roof;  from  the  dark  cliffs  sounds  the  raven's  clar 
ion  cry,  and  there  are  always  sea-gulls  near.  With 
spring  come  all  the  sea-fowl  to  the  bird-cliffs, 
and  curlew,  golden  plover,  and  Arctic  jaegers, 
'plaintive  creatures  that  pity  themselves  on 
moorlands.'  All  through  the  long  dark  winter 
the  wren  and  titlark  sing  cheerfully.  The 
'mouse's  brother'  the  Baby  will  call  the  Faroe 
wren,  and  she  will  know  one  fact  of  which  grave 
scientists  are  ignorant,  that  the  'mouse's  brother' 
and  the  titlark  sing  a  bird-translation  of  a  verse 
from  the  old  Kingos  Psalm-book.  She  will  know, 
too,  how  the  eider-duck  won  her  down,  the 
story  of  the  naughty  shag  and  the  Apostle  Peter, 
why  the  cormorant  has  no  tongue,  and  that  the 
great  black-backed  gull  once  struck  our  Lord 
upon  the  Cross  and  thenceforth  bore  a  blood-red 
spot  on  his  bill.  Well  can  the  Baby  say  in  the 
words  of  the  Kalevala,  'The  birds  of  Heaven, 
the  waves  of  the  sea,  have  spoken  and  sung  to  me ; 
the  music  of  many  waters  has  been  my  master.' 
Few  will  the  Baby's  pleasures  be.  She  will 
never  have  a  Christmas  tree,  nor  hang  up  her 
stocking,  nor  have  other  presents  than  a  pair  of 
mittens  or  a  woolen  kerchief  for  her  head.  The 
day  before  Christmas  she  will  help  her  mother 
to  scrub  everything  that  can  be  scrubbed,  in 
doors  and  out,  working  far  into  'Jola-Natt, '  so 
that  all  shall  be  sweet  and  clean  for  the  birthday 
of  our  Lord.  And  next  morning,  in  the  sod- 
roofed  church  where  never  was  a  fire  made,  she 

299 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

will  sit  with  her  mother  on  the  women's  side, 
waiting  meekly  after  service  until  the  last  man 
and  the  last  boy  have  left  their  seats.  She  will 
dance  lightly  on  the  sea-rocks,  her  fair  hair  blow 
ing  in  the  wind,  retreating  as  the  big  waves  crash 
down,  and  singing  something  which  sounds  like 
'  Ala  kan  eje  taka  mej!'  (The  wave  cannot  catch 
me !)  She  sings  it  to  the  same  little  tune  I  sang 
as  a  child  when  dancing  back  and  forth  across  the 
danger-line  of  Taffy's  land,  mocking  the  rushes  of 
an  agile  Taffy. 

From  seven  to  fourteen  years  she  will  go  to 
school  two  weeks  out  of  every  six  (the  school 
master  must  be  shared  between  three  hamlets), 
and  when  fourteen  years  old,  she  will  be  con 
firmed,  if  she  has  learned  enough  Danish  to  pass 
the  examinations  and  to  say  the  prayers  and 
creed.  On  that  morning  of  confirmation  she  will 
turn  up  her  hair,  and  wear  a  dress  skirt  that  will 
flap  about  her  little  heels.  And  that  afternoon 
there  will  be  chocolate  and  cakes  in  her  father's 
cabin,  with  friends  coming  and  going. 

She  will  know  suspense  and  fear  and  sickening 
dread  when  'the  boats  are  out/  and  the  great 
gales  burst  without  warning.  From  every  ham 
let  the  sea  has  taken  many;  not  one  home  has 
been  spared.  She  cannot  escape  the  common  lot ; 
of  grief  she  shall  have  her  share. 

Three  days  of  storm  passed  and  the  Baby  was 
not  thriving.  She  needed  her  mother,  and  a  con- 

300 


THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

sultation  was  held,  the  old  sea-dogs  of  the  ham 
let  advising.  The  gale  was  surely  lessening,  and 
with  nine  picked  men,  eight  to  row  and  one  to 
steer,  it  could  and  should  be  doiw. .  The  passage 
was  to  besnade  to  1  horshavn  to  bring  the  Pastor 
home.  So  off  they  went  in  the  early  morning. 

I  was  in  my  room,  upstairs,  about  eleven 
o'clock,  when  I  noticed  that  the  roar  of  the  wind 
and  the  creaking  and  groaning  of  the  timbers 
overhead  had  ceased.  I  went  to  the  window  in 
time  to  see  a  great  mass  of  snow  gathered  up  from 
the  ground  and  hurled  against  the  house.  In 
that  short  pause  the  wind  had  changed,  and  now 
blew  from  the  west  with  redoubled  fury.  I  hur 
ried  downstairs,  and  one  glance  at  the  Pastor- 
inde's  face  confirmed  my  fears.  She  knew  only 
too  well  where  the  returning  boat  was  at  that 
hour:  far  out,  off  the  worst  place  on  the  coast,  in 
fierce  sea-currents,  and  in  the  full  sweep  of  this 
new  off-shore  gale.  The  men  were  in  dire  peril. 
Many  boats  the  Pastorinde  had  known  to  'go 
away'  in  such  a  storm,  after  hours  of  desperate 
struggle  to  hold  the  boat  in  place  and  make  some 
headway  toward  land.  Then,  as  strength  failed, 
there  would  be  a  slipping  seaward,  faster  and 
faster,  till  men  and  boat  went  under,  overwhelmed 
by  a  mighty  cross-sea  —  '  the  drowning  wave.' 

Hour  after  hour  went  by ;  the  Pastorinde  paced 
the  rooms,  pale  and  silent.  Under  the  shelter  of 
walls  and  boat-houses  were  groups  of  men  look 
ing  seaward.  At  last  a  shout,  and  men  pointing; 

301 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

out  in  a  smother  of  flying  foam  a  dark  spot  had 
been  seen,  then  lost,  then  seen  again  far  away 
under  the  cliffs  of  distant  Stromo.  The  boat  was 
slowly  making  its  way  to  a  point  due  west,  where 
it  could  blow  in  with  the  gale.  All  the  men  and 
boys  who  could  stand  on  their  legs  were  down  in 
the  surf  to  meet  it,  and  with  a  rush  the  boat  was 
borne  up  on  land. 

All  was  ready  in  the  parsonage.  The  rug  in 
the  dining-room  rolled  up,  hot  coffee  made,  food 
on  the  table ;  and  the  Pastorinde  was  standing  in 
the  doorway  as  the  men  toiled  feebly  up,  their 
clothes  streaming  with  sea-water.  Nine  men 
only !  Where  was  the  tenth  —  where  was  the  Pas 
tor?  And,  all  together,  the  tale  was  told.  The 
Pastor,  they  had  found,  was  not  in  Thorshavn; 
two  days  ago  the  Danish  gun-boat  had  carried 
him  off  to  Trangisvaag  on  some  church  affair, 
and  nothing  had  been  seen  of  him  since.  Higher 
and  higher  rose  the  voices,  trembling  with  the  ir 
ritation  and  unreasoning  anger  of  utter  exhaus 
tion.  The  storm  had  struck  them  at  the  worst 
place;  for  four  hours  they  had  struggled  just  to 
hold  their  own,  and  were  drifting  seaward,  when 
a  short  lull  came,  and  with  hope  renewed  they 
fought  again  and  at  last  reached  the  sheltering 
cliffs  of  Stromo.  Their  eyes  were  wild  and  glassy, 
their  hair  matted,  their  hands  swollen  and  bleed 
ing  from  straining  at  the  oars.  The  Pastorinde 
-  wise  woman  —  wasted  no  words  of  sympathy : 
she  poured  coffee,  hot  fragrant  coffee  with  plenty 

302 


THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

of  cream  in  it.  The  men  drank  and  the  talking 
quieted  to  grateful  mumbles,  and  the  cups  were 
filled  again,  while  their  clothes  dripped  sea-water 
and  the  floor  was  all  afloat. 

Two  mornings  later,  before  dawn,  I  heard  a 
knock  on  my  door,  and  the  Pastorinde's  voice 
calling,  *  Thc-stofiH-  has  ceased  and  they  are  going 
to  take  the  Baby  to  Thorshavn,  to  be  baptized 
by  the  Thorshavn  pastor.  They  will  take  you, 
too]  if  you  can  be  ready  in  half  an  hour.  ' 

We  were  ready,  all  the  baptismal  party,  plus 
myself  and  the  borrowed  ' maternal  font.'  One 
of  the  men  came  for  me  with  a  lantern,  and  I 
clutched  his  strong  hand  and  slipped  and  slid 
over  the  icy  rocks.  Lights  flared  here  and  there, 
and  land,  sea,  and  sky  were  all  one  blackness; 
only  a  faint  gray  line  showed  where  the  sea  was 
breaking.  The  surf  was  still  high,  covering  the 
usual  landing-place.  One  by  one,  we  women 
were  carried  to  a  group  of  rocks  that  rose  above 
the  surf.  Beyond,  the  boat  was  pitching  and 
tossing,  two  men  in  the  rowing-seats  keeping  the 
high  sharp  prow  pointing  toward  the  land.  It 
was  no  easy  matter  to  get  on  board,  but  we  stood 
not  upon  the  order  of  our  going  but  jumped  at 
once.  At  one  moment  I  was  on  top  of  two  god 
mothers,  the  next  moment  five  godfathers  scram 
bled  over  me  to  their  places  at  the  oars.  Muffled 
shrieks  arose  and  ejaculations : '  A  k  Gud  bevare  os!J 
'Ak  Herre  Jesu!'  The  boat  swept  out  into  the 

303 


ATLANTIC  CLASSICS 

darkness,  and  we  women-folk  picked  ourselves  up 
and  sorted  ourselves  out. 

It  was  bitterly  cold,  and  it  rained  ^— -ok,  how  it 
rained !  But  we  did  n'^care,  we  were  going  to 
Thorshavn  at  last,  and  ihere  was  a  good  sea. 
The  change  of  wind,  the  down-pouf,  had  flat 
tened  the  broken  surges.  Only  the  great  ground- 
swells  swept  landward,  rank  on  rank,  crashing 
along  the  coast.  We  mounted  slowly  to  their 
summits  and  glided  down  the  outer  slopes  with 
the  motion  of  a  bird  in  flight.  Gayly  rose  the 
talk  in  the  boat,  and  there  was  a  lighting  of  little 
pipes,  one  at  a  time,  so  that  the  rowing  need  not 
be  hindered.  Now  a  faint  yellow  gleam  on  the 
southern  horizon  beyond  the  down-dropping  veils 
of  mist;  then,  dimly  seen,  the  snow-crowned 
heights  of  Naalso  rising  eighteen  hundred  feet 
from  the  sea.  The  danger-point  on  Stromo 
passed,  and  then  in  the  distance  twinkling  lights, 
and  a  breath  from  shore  bearing  the  fragrance  of 
peat-smoke.  —  'So  he  bringeth  them  to  their 
desired  haven.' 

Out  on  the  fjord  the  Danish  gun-boat  rose  and 
fell,  and  on  the  wet  shore-rocks  was  a  lonely  fig 
ure  gazing  out  to  sea,  like  the  pictures  of  Napo 
leon  on  Elba.  It  had  a  familiar  look  —  it  was  — 
yes,  it  was  the  Pastor ! 

They  laid  hands  on  the  Pastor,  as  though  they 
expected  him  to  vanish  from  their  sight.  The 
Baby  would  be  baptized  then  and  there.  Scant 

304 


THE  BAPTIZING  OF  THE  BABY 

time  was  given  to  the  godmothers  to  change  their 
shoes,  skirts,  and  stockings,  and  to  prink. 

Clang,  Clang!  Clang!  rang  the  church-bell  in 
treble  staccato  notes.  There  was  a  clattering  of 
pattens  in  the  stony  lanes  as  children  hurried  to 
the  Baptism.  The  Pastor,  a  dignified  priestly 
figure  in  his  long  black  robes  and  Elizabethan 
ruff,  left  theThorshavn  parsonage,  passed  through 
the  side  gate  to  the  church-portal,  and  the  bell- 
ringing  died  away. 

I  was  down  at  the  landing  an  hour  later  to  say 
'farvel'  to  the  Pastor  and  the  baptismal  party. 
And  as  the  boat  left  shore  I  turned  away  to  my 
little  cabin-home  with  a  sigh  of  relief.  The 
Baby  —  Karin  Marin  Malene  Elsebet  Jakobina 
Jakob  son  —  was  baptized. 


THE    END 


Biographical  Notes 

Henry  C.  Merwin  has  practiced  law  in  Boston  for 
a  generation.  A  tireless  and  enthusiastic  worker 
in  the  cause  of  kindness  to  dumb  animals,  he 
organized,  many  years  ago,  and  still  largely 
manages,  the  Decoration-Day  Workhorse  Pa 
rade — an  institution  which  has  been  extraordi 
narily  beneficent  in  its  results. 

William  Beebe  is  Curator  of  Ornithology  at  the  New 
York  Zoological  Park,  and  has  traveled  far  and 
wide,  especially  in  tropical  countries,  in  study  or 
search  of  every  bird  that  flies. 

Jane  Addams,  a  pioneer  among  those  Americans  who 
have  spent  their  lives  in  ameliorating  the  con 
ditions  which  breed  poverty  in  our  great  cities, 
has  been  for  nearly  thirty  years  the  head  of  Hull- 
House,  Chicago,  which  she  founded  in  1889. 

Reverend  Samuel  McChord  Crothers  is  the  minis 
ter  of  the  First  Church  (Unitarian)  at  Cambridge, 
Massachusetts.  The  most  individual  among  our 
essayists,  he  is  known  wherever  the  essay  is  read. 

Professor  Robert  M.  Gay  fills  the  chair  of  English 
at  Goucher  College  for  Women  in  Baltimore. 

Jean  Kenyon  Mackenzie  is  an  American  missionary 
to  Southwest  Africa,  where  she  has  long  lived 
with  the  black  folk  on  terms  of  sympathy  and 
understanding. 

Edgar  J.  Goodspeed  is  a  professor  of  Chicago  Uni 
versity,  where  he  teaches  biblical  and  patristic  lore. 

William  T.  Foster  has  been,  since  its  establish 
ment,  President  of  Reed  College,  Oregon,  where  his 

307 


BIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 

policy  of  opposition  to  intercollegiate  athletics  is 
creating  a  new  tradition  of  college  sport. 

Lida  F.  Baldwin  is  a  teacher  of  Youngs  town,  Ohio, 
and  a  lover  and  observer  of  all  natural  things. 

Fannie  Stearns  Gifford  is  a  frequent  contributor  of 
both  prose  and  verse  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly  from 
her  home  in  Pittsfield,  Mass. 

John  Jay  Chapman  is  an  essayist  of  uncompromising 
vigor  and  independence  of  thought.  The  author 
of  many  books,  including  a  memoir  of  William 
Lloyd  Garrison,  he  has  also  published,  with  a 
notable  introduction,  the  letters  of  his  son  Victor, 
who  was  killed  in  the  flying  service  on  the  Western 
Front. 

Lucy  M.  Donnelly  is  a  lecturer  in  English  in  Bryn 
Mawr  College. 

Sharlot  Mabridth  Hall  is  a  writer  and  traveler, 
with  a  very  considerable  and  specialized  knowl 
edge  of  Southwestern  America. 

Richard  Bowland  Kimball,  a  resident  of  Adamsville, 
R.  I.,  is  a  pleasant  essayist,  and  a  true  lover  of 
dogs. 

Laura  Spencer  Portor,  one  of  the  editors  of  a  well- 
known  woman's  paper  in  New  York,  is  a  writer  of 
versatile  and  temperamental  charm. 

Mrs.  Anne  C.  E.  Allinson,  wife  of  a  professor  at 
Brown  University,  is  an  enthusiastic  and  informed 
devotee  of  Greek  history,  art,  and  literature.  Be 
fore  her  marriage  Mrs.  Allinson  was  Dean  of  Wo 
men  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 

Elizabeth  Taylor  still  lives  in  the  Faroe  Islands,  with 
whose  customs  arid  mode  of  life  she  has  the 
familiarity  of  a  native,  with  more  than  a  native's 
appreciation. 


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